Video: a field guide to recent Champagne vintages

ie, what they (often) actually taste like.

Time, I think, for a highly personal take on the general character of recent Champagne vintages. It’s not focused on technical specs, but on shape, feel and balance. There are colours! And shapes! Ok, and maybe a bit of techie stuff….but it’s really about the actual wines, not the reasons why they taste the way they do.

We’re not all there playing guess-the-vintage parlour games with Prestige Cuvées, but it’s useful to understand what a vintage is bringing to the table. You can’t taste ‘terrible hailstorms on the 16th August’, but you can taste shape, extraction, acidity….and if you don’t really like a wine, it might be helpful to understand that it might be the vintage character, rather than the producer’s style, that's not hitting the bullseye for you.

I’ve often drawn shapes like this in my notepads. I hope they make sense; Red, Orange and Green give you Warm, Moderate and Cool fruit

characters over the whole shape, and there are blue and brown shapes for acids and phenolics (grippiness), too - both things that are strong signatures of individual vintages.

I’m sure there will be plenty that will take issue with individual characterisations, but that’s fine - some vintages, such as 2014, 2016 and 2017 are highly varied. Some, like 2013, 2015 and 2019 seem to have a more consistent pan-regional character.

Watch the video below. I’d be interested to know whether this way of drawing wines makes sense so anyone else!