Aging champagnes/ buying drinking aged champagnes- help please

[Michael_S_Monie]

Trust your own experience. You have more than enough evidence that older champagne is not for you. “A couple of bottles out of over 100. Not good odds” I would advise you to focus on Champers that are more in your wheel house. It is easy to get hooked by the idea that all wine should be aged but if you don’t get value, move on. For me, 15 years is about my limit for sparkling wine. YMMV.

15 years from the vintage date, the disgorgement date, or what? 15 years from the vintage date would imply that everyone should drink up e.g. their 2006 Comtes within the next year or so, which doesn’t sound right.

I was thinking the same thing. I was surprised with a recent purchase of Cedric Bouchard that the 2015’s are already available, while the 2008 Comtes de Champagne has still not been released. How many disgorgements and over what period of time have there been of the Heidsieck 1995 Blanc des Millenaires? Until all producers start putting all the relevant information on the bottle labels, we’ll never know for sure what it is we have.

[William_Kelley]

To me, Blake, it sounds as if on the one hand you may just not especially appreciate what can be the very toasty aromatic palette of older Champagnes, and as if on the other, you may have gotten a little unlucky with bottles that are not 100% perfectly conserved. In the US, my experience with older Champagne has been a lot of bottles which were very far removed from what they would taste like from a cold cellar in the region—more so than for any other wine. Sometimes a 90% bottle is still fun to drink if you know what a perfect bottle tastes like and it evokes it; but if you have never encountered a perfect bottle, then it may not be so pleasurable—and I think this is where some of the disconnect between wine lovers who adore old Champagne almost indiscriminately and those who don’t care for it comes from.

Stellar post William. Lots of great info. I have much to say about many of your points and at some point look forward to sitting down with you and expanding. You do hit on a few aspects of wine drinking that is very important to me and that has to do with texture, mouthfeel and service. I’m extremely conscientious about preparing the stemware properly and keeping bottles chilled while working through them.

As to the taste profile, I actually like the toasty nuances that I find in some champagnes having had lots of Krug and Bollinger which are very toasty in general.

No doubt, those bottles that stay near their birth place have a better chance to survive and perform. I will be spending a lot of time in Amsterdam once I can get back there and will seek out sources for some bottles.

My goal is to experience 100% perfectly conserved bottles and I know I’ll be good with 90%.

Thanks so much for your input.

My pleasure! And hope that transpires sooner rather than later…

I would probably distinguish a bit between the barrel fermentation patina of Krug and Bollinger (nuts, dried fruits, candied fruits) and the more overtly Maillard-derived brioche / toasted bread of e.g. Comtes and the more reductive, empyreumatic direction those qualities take in e.g. 1990s/early-2000s Dom Pérignon. But it is obviously really difficult to break down the stylistic profile of these grandes marques as there are so many factors at play.

One thing I neglected to mention in my first post was that some of the great values in older Champagne are non-vintage. I bought a case of 1970s Delamotte NV a few years ago that was just delicious, and more exciting than plenty of much more expensive vintage Champagnes that I can think of…

[William_Kelley]

I was going to give William a few more hours before a PM, but thankfully… he sensed the call. Do you have any thoughts, William, about the mid-90s Krugs (95 and 96, particularly) vs. this 70s, 80s period that you describe above?

I admire the 1996 a lot, but I don’t think it’s on the level of the 1988 or 1982 to my taste. The 1988 gets my nod as the best modern era vintage Krug. But most of the Krug in my cellar is not vintage but rather Private Cuvée, from the cellar I purchased in the Côte de Blancs that I mentioned in my earlier post (and which was the basis for a very in-depth article on Krug in TWA if you are interested). I am going to be really sad when I have drunk it all…

The 1995, in the shadow of the 1996, is very consistently excellent and I like it a great deal. Probably better relative value than the 1996 and maybe less traded too.

[Michael_S_Monie]

Just opened a 1999 Roederer Blanc de Blanc. It was purchased upon release and stored at 55 degrees. Good effervescence with the color being between pale yellow and light golden. Cool sea breeze on the nose and a melange of citrus on the palate, this reminded me of a quality, aged Chablis with bubbles. Clearly this could have easily gone another 5 years, but is in a sweet spot right now.

[roybehr]

I have had a 1981 Ruinart BdB and a 1981 Bollinger RD in the last two years. Not considered a great vintage, but it’s a dear friend’s birth year wine. Both were highly enjoyable, and in decent condition, especially the Ruinart. The RD lost its mousse a bit faster, but to William’s point, that may be because we drank it outside (covid distancing) and so it may have warmed up a bit.

So I guess it’s a crap shoot, with some rolls being higher odds (and more expensive) than others.

[SBayard]

I personally love oxidative notes (butterscotch, caramel and so forth) but understand that it’s not for everyone.

Interestingly, from a technical perspective, many of the aromas that are perceived as “oxidative” in older Champagnes are actually the result of Maillard-like reactions between residual sugars (including dosage) and amino acids liberated by yeast autolysis. There is some interesting research going on about this at the moment. So it can be very hard to parse apart these aromas; genuinely oxidative aromas; the aromas (where applicable) of élevage in barrel of vins clairs; and—in the case of a tiny handful of producers including most notably Selosse and Prévost—the aromas imparted by biological aging under flor of vins clairs.

This is more than just an arcane point: it means that Champagne matures on cork in a fundamentally different way to dry table wines. The transformation is radical and not generally linear. And, by the same token, those rare Champagnes that are made from truly ripe grapes and which don’t see any dosage (I’m mainly thinking of Cédric Bouchard’s wines here) tend to actually develop much more like still table wines.

Personally, I really love old Champagne: but I’m also very picky about it. Without perfect conservation and without being built to age, the results are not very interesting. For my palate, the retention of a more than vestigial mousse is also important, as it is a defining constituent of the wine style (though I know there are some fans of old Champagne who would disagree with this). Service is also really important: scrupulously clean glasses, and—related to my point about mousse—keeping the wine reasonably cool to slow down degassing.

I do buy quite a bit of old Champagne, but I only buy it from cold Northern European cellars and drink it in France. It just doesn’t seem to travel well. I have a bottle of early 1970s Krug Private Cuvée lined up for my 31st next week and maybe I’ll take a video of how it looks in the glass in terms of color and mousse. I bought a stash from a cellar in the Côte de Blancs and every bottle has just been pristine. Tasting these old Krugs back to the late 1940s, it was telling to see that pretty much every decade brought a step down in concentration and vinosity: not that the 1980s Krugs aren’t brilliant wines—they are—but there is a level of texture and body in the older wines that takes them to another level for my palate. This correlates quite well with the history of yields in the region: as I wrote recently in TWA (since this is becoming a longer post despite my best intentions), in the 1930s, yields in Champagne averaged 24 hectoliters per hectare. By the 1950s, that had risen to 33; in the 1960s, to over 50; and by the 1970s and 1980s, to over 60 hectoliters per hectare. Just as importantly, during the same period, the average weight of a grape cluster in Champagne more than doubled. You really can taste this in the wines in my experience. Of course, there were lots of other changes too, but this is pretty important.

As for producers with a track record of aging really interestingly for 40+ years, I would nominate Krug, Bollinger, Phillipponnat’s Clos des Goises and Lanson as some of the producers where properly stored bottles from the 1950s and 1960s are still likely to be very interesting to drink. If you want to drink wines from the 1970s and 1980s there are many more options, but—getting back to my point in the preceding paragraph—I have actually found wines from those decades to be a bit more fragile than the older but more concentrated vintages!

To me, Blake, it sounds as if on the one hand you may just not especially appreciate what can be the very toasty aromatic palette of older Champagnes, and as if on the other, you may have gotten a little unlucky with bottles that are not 100% perfectly conserved. In the US, my experience with older Champagne has been a lot of bottles which were very far removed from what they would taste like from a cold cellar in the region—more so than for any other wine. Sometimes a 90% bottle is still fun to drink if you know what a perfect bottle tastes like and it evokes it; but if you have never encountered a perfect bottle, then it may not be so pleasurable—and I think this is where some of the disconnect between wine lovers who adore old Champagne almost indiscriminately and those who don’t care for it comes from.

Hi William, Thank you for your post! I was wondering if you could share some details regarding the research being done with aging Champagne or perhaps point us to some resources/books/reports. I’m very curious about the chemical processes that occur and how those play out over time, especially if there’s some insight as to how harvest conditions/winemakers’ decisions influence aging in sparkling wine. Thank you

[Marshall_Manning]

To me, Blake, it sounds as if on the one hand you may just not especially appreciate what can be the very toasty aromatic palette of older Champagnes, and as if on the other, you may have gotten a little unlucky with bottles that are not 100% perfectly conserved. In the US, my experience with older Champagne has been a lot of bottles which were very far removed from what they would taste like from a cold cellar in the region—more so than for any other wine. Sometimes a 90% bottle is still fun to drink if you know what a perfect bottle tastes like and it evokes it; but if you have never encountered a perfect bottle, then it may not be so pleasurable—and I think this is where some of the disconnect between wine lovers who adore old Champagne almost indiscriminately and those who don’t care for it comes from.

Great post, William, and thank you for all of the info. I was going to suggest to Blake that I think Champagne might be the wine that is most sensitive to mediocre storage, and I wonder if you feel that the Maillard reaction you mentioned becomes more noticeable if bottles are in any way mistreated? It would make sense to me that the reaction might be accelerated under higher temperatures, therefore causing more of these flavors that are perceived as “oxidative.” As someone who used to work in the wholesale business, I know there are many importers, distributors, and retailers who don’t treat wine as well as they should, and it seems that in many stores the high end Champagnes are up on the top shelf near the bright lights.

[Arv_R]

Great thread, thanks for starting Blake and thanks to William for expanding on it.

I’ve been mostly disappointed in aging champers, and even in most vintage examples.

I don’t get enough out of this category to merit dabbling beyond NV.

This is fortunate for my wallet, but it just means the money is squandered on other regions…

[Jan_Janas]

One thing I neglected to mention in my first post was that some of the great values in older Champagne are non-vintage. I bought a case of 1970s Delamotte NV a few years ago that was just delicious, and more exciting than plenty of much more expensive vintage Champagnes that I can think of…

See William you can’t just go around posting nuggets like that and pretend nothing happened

Is this true of most NV Champagnes from decent producers? Any particular things to pay attention to? I though NV would mostly go 5-8 years now you come and splendidly buy cases of 40 years old NVs and enjoy them more than vintage Champagne!

I’m curious to see where this goes…

[Fred_Daniels]

One of my top ten wines was a 20 year old Bollinger Special Cuvee NV in mag. I agree provenance is key…and champagnes are more susceptible to damage. But how many people have 25 year old cellars? I moved like 10 times after college, and when I did settle down and build a reliable cellar for the long term, Champagnes are one of the first wines I went to so always drank them up. But my sum of learned knowledge (as also determined here by several others) is to at least put away a few mags of NV (especially if you can try one and determine it has the stuffing and balance for aging) every year.

Thanks for the 22 year bench mark…I think that is right on. Ancient champagnes (more than 40 years old) that I have had are hit and miss, but 20-30 year olds have been often spectacular. And frankly, drinking 2008 Cristal in 2030 does not seem like such a strange proposition…

[Fred_C]

But most of the Krug in my cellar is not vintage but rather Private Cuvée

A wonderful “problem” to have!

I too adore the Private Cuvée (if you can find it from a reliable source) and the 20-40 year old Grand Cuvée. I’ve tried to hoard as much as I could the last few years when it was under appreciated but it appears the word is out.

Regarding the 70s Private Cuvée, do you notice any fine sediment? I have a hypothesis that sediment may be a sign of poor storage. So if yours does not, then it confirms a suspicion I had on a bottle of 70s Private Cuvée from a couple of years back.

Also, thank for a wonderful and enlightening champagne post and I’m looking forward to the Krug piece!

[Otto_Forsberg]

See William you can’t just go around posting nuggets like that and pretend nothing happened

Is this true of most NV Champagnes from decent producers? Any particular things to pay attention to? I though NV would mostly go 5-8 years now you come and splendidly buy cases of 40 years old NVs and enjoy them more than vintage Champagne!

I’m curious to see where this goes…

You’re thinking of the NVs one sees today. They are built for the short-term consumption and the most inexpensive ones really are best when released and won’t develop much if at all after release.

Most Grande Marque NVs tend to benefit from aging, but most are built for maybe 10-15 years, not for 30-40 years.

Some of the greatest older Champagnes I’ve tasted have been NVs as well, often ranging from the early 80’s to mid-or-early 70’s. If looking underneath the “surface” (i.e. the taste), they seem to be less ripe, higher in acidity and having somewhat higher dosage. Superficially they might be same wines as the modern NVs, but there definitely are some differences and I doubt many modern NVs can age the same way as ye olde bubblies do.

[William_Kelley]

Hi William, Thank you for your post! I was wondering if you could share some details regarding the research being done with aging Champagne or perhaps point us to some resources/books/reports. I’m very curious about the chemical processes that occur and how those play out over time, especially if there’s some insight as to how harvest conditions/winemakers’ decisions influence aging in sparkling wine. Thank you

There’s a lot of ongoing work on this, but for now one of the most suggestive papers to have been published is Le Menn et al., “N,S,O‐Heterocycles in Aged Champagne Reserve Wines and Correlation with Free Amino Acid Concentrations”, Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry (65), 2017, pp. 2345-2356.

The abstract will give you the gist:

Champagne regulations allow winegrowers to stock still wines to compensate for quality shifts in vintages, mainly due to climate variations. According to their technical requirements and house style, Champagne producers use these stored wines in their blends to enhance complexity. The presence of lees and aging at low pH (2.95−3.15), as in Champagne wines, lead to several modifications in wine composition. These conditions, combined with extended aging, result in the required environment for the Maillard chemical reaction, involving aromatic molecules, including sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen heterocycles (such as thiazole, furan, and pyrazine derivatives), which may have a sensory impact on wine. Some aromatic heterocycles in 50 mono- varietal wines aged from 1 to 27 years provided by Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne house were determined by the SPME-GC-MS method. The most interesting result highlighted a strong correlation between certain heterocycle concentrations and wine age. The second revealed a correlation between heterocyclic compound and free amino acid concentrations measured in the wines, suggesting that these compounds are potential aromatic precursors when wine is aged on lees and, thus, potential key compounds in the bouquet of aged Champagnes. The principal outcome of these assays was to reveal, for the first time, that aromatic heterocycle concentrations in Champagne base wines are correlated with wine age.

These aromatic heterocycles are associated with aromas of toasted bread, coffee, pastry etc…

[William_Kelley]

But most of the Krug in my cellar is not vintage but rather Private Cuvée

A wonderful “problem” to have!

I too adore the Private Cuvée (if you can find it from a reliable source) and the 20-40 year old Grand Cuvée. I’ve tried to hoard as much as I could the last few years when it was under appreciated but it appears the word is out.

Regarding the 70s Private Cuvée, do you notice any fine sediment? I have a hypothesis that sediment may be a sign of poor storage. So if yours does not, then it confirms a suspicion I had on a bottle of 70s Private Cuvée from a couple of years back.

Also, thank for a wonderful and enlightening champagne post and I’m looking forward to the Krug piece!

You may be right, because there hasn’t been any sediment in my bottles…

[William_Kelley]

One thing I neglected to mention in my first post was that some of the great values in older Champagne are non-vintage. I bought a case of 1970s Delamotte NV a few years ago that was just delicious, and more exciting than plenty of much more expensive vintage Champagnes that I can think of…

See William you can’t just go around posting nuggets like that and pretend nothing happened

Is this true of most NV Champagnes from decent producers? Any particular things to pay attention to? I though NV would mostly go 5-8 years now you come and splendidly buy cases of 40 years old NVs and enjoy them more than vintage Champagne!

I’m curious to see where this goes…

As Otto says later in the thread, with the exception of some very age worthy NV prestige cuvées such as Krug Grande Cuvée and LP’s Grande Siècle, I’m really talking about the NV Bruts of the better houses in the 1960s, '70s and ‘80s, rather than the NV bottlings of today. To the higher acids and higher dosage that Otto mentions I’d be inclined to add more concentration, too, in many cases. I definitely do age NV wines today—especially Pol Roger in magnum, which shows really well around 7-15 years old and useful to have around—but nothing is springing to mind that I can see benefitting from, still less needing, 20+ years age. I would also say that, if buying NV cuvées to age, it can be worth paying attention to the base vintage: Pol Roger’s 2013-base NV Brut struck me as having a bit more to give over time than the newly-released 2015-base, for example. Of course, the idea of these cuvées is to somewhat efface vintage variation but when the differences between vintages are as great as those between 2013 and 2015, they tend to make themselves felt in the wines’ underlying structure.

[Dennis_Borczon]

William, whatever they are paying you at the WA, it ain’t nearly enough.

Blake, ever dip you toe into Bouchard? Much more like a still wine and in a way, I get it that he wants you to taste more of where the grapes are grown rather than just dazzle you with aromatic fireworks and lots of bubbles. I just adore this stuff. Never was that much of a bubblehead until I drank his BdN des Ursules. A thinking man’s bubbles and I bet they will evolve nicely. However I will likely never find out as I drink these almost compulsively.

Now I did it, just added to the hype…

[William_Kelley]

To me, Blake, it sounds as if on the one hand you may just not especially appreciate what can be the very toasty aromatic palette of older Champagnes, and as if on the other, you may have gotten a little unlucky with bottles that are not 100% perfectly conserved. In the US, my experience with older Champagne has been a lot of bottles which were very far removed from what they would taste like from a cold cellar in the region—more so than for any other wine. Sometimes a 90% bottle is still fun to drink if you know what a perfect bottle tastes like and it evokes it; but if you have never encountered a perfect bottle, then it may not be so pleasurable—and I think this is where some of the disconnect between wine lovers who adore old Champagne almost indiscriminately and those who don’t care for it comes from.

Great post, William, and thank you for all of the info. I was going to suggest to Blake that I think Champagne might be the wine that is most sensitive to mediocre storage, and I wonder if you feel that the Maillard reaction you mentioned becomes more noticeable if bottles are in any way mistreated? It would make sense to me that the reaction might be accelerated under higher temperatures, therefore causing more of these flavors that are perceived as “oxidative.” As someone who used to work in the wholesale business, I know there are many importers, distributors, and retailers who don’t treat wine as well as they should, and it seems that in many stores the high end Champagnes are up on the top shelf near the bright lights.

I guess that’s conceivable—I don’t know enough about the chemistry to hazard an opinion, but the way “cooked” Champagne tastes suggests you might be onto something. Of course, given that such conditions can also cause oxidation, we get back to the difficulty of trying to parse aromas which we describe using one vocabulary (toasted/nutty/roasted etc) but which can have a variety of different and distinct sources…

[Jan_Janas]

You’re thinking of the NVs one sees today. They are built for the short-term consumption and the most inexpensive ones really are best when released and won’t develop much if at all after release.

Most Grande Marque NVs tend to benefit from aging, but most are built for maybe 10-15 years, not for 30-40 years.

Some of the greatest older Champagnes I’ve tasted have been NVs as well, often ranging from the early 80’s to mid-or-early 70’s. If looking underneath the “surface” (i.e. the taste), they seem to be less ripe, higher in acidity and having somewhat higher dosage. Superficially they might be same wines as the modern NVs, but there definitely are some differences and I doubt many modern NVs can age the same way as ye olde bubblies do.

This is very interesting and a great insider’s tip, however, I wonder how hard it is to source well-stored NVs from those older eras. I mean they don’t even feature disgorgement dates on most online auction sites…

As Otto says later in the thread, with the exception of some very age worthy NV prestige cuvées such as Krug Grande Cuvée and LP’s Grande Siècle, I’m really talking about the NV Bruts of the better houses in the 1960s, '70s and ‘80s, rather than the NV bottlings of today. To the higher acids and higher dosage that Otto mentions I’d be inclined to add more concentration, too, in many cases. I definitely do age NV wines today—especially Pol Roger in magnum, which shows really well around 7-15 years old and useful to have around—but nothing is springing to mind that I can see benefitting from, still less needing, 20+ years age. I would also say that, if buying NV cuvées to age, it can be worth paying attention to the base vintage: Pol Roger’s 2013-base NV Brut struck me as having a bit more to give over time than the newly-released 2015-base, for example. Of course, the idea of these cuvées is to somewhat efface vintage variation but when the differences between vintages are as great as those between 2013 and 2015, they tend to make themselves felt in the wines’ underlying structure.

And what is the trend nowadays? Are we going back to lower yields and more concentration in Champagne? I guess if one looks at it by producer as opposed to “era” one can still find some NVs with higher concentration that are more apt to be aged? Maybe we can crack the 2020s Shampoos code

[William_Kelley]

And what is the trend nowadays? Are we going back to lower yields and more concentration in Champagne? I guess if one looks at it by producer as opposed to “era” one can still find some NVs with higher concentration that are more apt to be aged? Maybe we can crack the 2020s Shampoos code

The short answer is that as a whole, no, we are not: 2018 was one of the largest crops in living memory—see e.g. The 2018 Champagne Report | Wine-Searcher News & Features And we will be living with the last few decades’ choices in terms of clonal selections for some time to come. What we are getting is somewhat riper fruit that’s lower in acidity… and given how soft a lot of 2015-base NV Bruts are tasting as they begin to hit the market, that is not an immensely thrilling proposition if it isn’t accompanied by real depth and concentration. Think flaccid and open-knit rather than textural and vinous.

[Robert_Sand]

I’m really glad that you posted this, Blake. I’ve been wondering the same about really old Champagne and have to think that at some point, it becomes more of an academic exercise than an experience of pleasure. I’m looking forward to the responses from those who know.

It quite simple: if you prefer your Champagne “refreshing and vibrant” you should stick to young(er) bottles.
With age all sparklers lose freshness - and what they gain instead is not to everybodys taste. It´s similar to aged white Burgundy, if you don´t like deep colour, aged/slightly oxidized notes, depth and tertär complexity instead of freshness and vibrancy you should avoid all bottles older than 15-20 years.
Moreover with Champagne every bottle is/can be different due to bottle-fermentation, the corks can be very different and the sparkles disapear to a certain degree - what´s left is often close to a still wine (at age 40, 50+).
Sure you can find very old bottles that are still lively and “sparkling”, but that´s not a safe bet - and if you find these wines “undrinkable” better look after younger bottles to avoid disapointment.
Even the late disgeorged Champagnes like Bollinger RD, Taittinger Collection, Dom P2 and Veuve CP are not to everybodys taste -