Tasting 1988, 1989 and 1990 Champagnes

Terre de Vins 'Best Old Vintage Awards', our top twenty and my top three.

Tasting at the Royal Champagne, February 2024. Photo C. A.Villers

I was invited to judge French wine magazine Terre de Vin’s unique tasting of 1988, 1989 and 1990 champagnes back in February. Each house was allowed to submit one vintage to be scored blind by a pretty astonishing selection of judges: chair Tyson Stelzer, Essi Avellan MW, Jeannie Cho Lee MW, Peter Liem, Andreas Larsson, Alberto Lupetti, Yuri Shima and David Morin (best caviste in France 2023), alongside the magazine’s Yves Tesson, Sylvie Tonnaire and publicity maestro Christian Holthausen. We picked the top twenty wines from thirty five, which you can read about here:

The wines will remain unscored and unranked (although our overall top three will be revealed in May). The aim of the tasting was to highlight champagne’s capacity for extended ageing - not to run a competition - and it’s surely for this reason that so many top producers submitted wines.

Here are my thoughts, plus three bottles that stood out.