A cool champagne vintage guide: What to drink from 2008 to 2021
Though I recognise there is probably no drier piece of wine content for most readers than a vintage guide, I’ll admit I’d started to feel that, having reached edition three of the Tatler Champagne Guide, it would behove us to make at least some sort of comment on vintages. The fact that vintage wines make up about half the list this year made the task feel all the more pressing.
However, this being a guide aimed more at those who want to pop and pour their champagne rather than pore over it, I decided that a chronological list of recent vintages detailing climatic conditions and the minutiae of wine styles would likely serve little purpose beyond alleviating insomnia.
Instead, I’ve divided recent vintages into a few broad stylistic buckets, based on the assumption that if you like, say, 2008, you’re reasonably likely to enjoy 2013. We cover 2008 (the oldest in the Guide) to 2021, which isn’t yet available as a vintage wine but is the base of some NVs currently on the market. Weather is addressed only in general terms and only to the extent that it impacts style. If certain wines shone in a particular year, they get a mention. Extended analysis of whether something was a Pinot Year, a Chardonnay Year, or even a Meunier Year is largely absent. This is not a regular vintage guide—it’s a cool vintage guide.
Vintage wines make up about half The Champagne Guide (Photo: Unsplash / Sue Winston)
Broad Lens: Big but Balanced: 2020, 2019, 2017, 2016, 2012
In recent years, unsurprisingly, this has become the norm, at least for vintages that are not big and unbalanced.
2020, the pandemic year, though stressful for many reasons, was surprisingly pleasant and abundant in the vineyards, masking protocols notwithstanding.
Years like 2019, with its punishing heat just alleviated by water reserves left by a wet spring, or the rot-plagued 2017 and 2016 with tiny, though high-quality, harvests, are unfortunately more common.
2012 was the original “split personality” vintage, with each season seeming to come from a different continent, but the ultimate result was often high-contrast gold, like Billecart-Salmon’s Louis Salmon.
Narrow Lens – Lean and Balanced: 2014, 2013, 2008
This sadly rarer and rarer shape was once the product of a perfect, idyllic season, like 2008, but lately is more often the result of an unusually cool year with a saving grace:
2014, with its warm autumn, and 2013, “saved” by hail that cut yields.
Rare 2014 and Comtes de Champagne 2013 are archetypal contemporary examples; 2023 could prove similar.
What are you drinking from 2008 to 2021? (Photo: Unsplash / Jael Coon)
Broad Oval or Rectangle – Big and Round or Big and Chunky: 2018, 2015, 2009
As in so many parts of the wine world, 2009 is the quintessential soft on soft year, with hot, ripe wines. However, as financial markets that year were neither hot nor ripe, not many vintage wines were made. Try Pascal Doquet’s Vertus for a round style with a Côte des Blancs acidic spine.
2015 is saved from too much muchness by the rigidity of its tannic structure, especially in cases where acidity is also bright. Luckily, these are abundant in our Guide: Cristal, DP, Belle Époque, Sir Winston Churchill, etc.
2018 was an easy, warm, bumper-crop year that followed the painful 2017, and so was perhaps overrated at first, proving a little softer than expected later. However, our Guide shows there was also a bumper crop of winners.
Narrow Oval: Lean and Soft: 2010
This very weird shape is more or less limited to 2010, when a hot summer followed by heavy rains left the wines both dilute and low-acid. Thankfully, there are standouts like Dom Ruinart 10 that entirely buck the trend.
Almost Unsalvageably Bad: 2021 and 2011
Let’s just forget these happened. One lemonade-from-lemons situation: Ruppert-Leroy’s Puzzle NV, based on 2021.
NOW READ
The best restaurants in Asia for the wine-obsessed, according to the Tatler Best Asia 100 list 2024
Inside the Tatler Champagne Festival 2024, a three-day celebration of the finest bubbly
Fizz de résistance: Krug celebrates 10 Years of Single Ingredient in Paris