Champagne rips up the rule book
While non-vintage (NV) is formally recognised as the mainstay of Champagne, it may seem odd that there is no equivalent recognition, by the authorities at least, for its well-groomed sibling, ‘multi-vintage’ (MV). The dominance of the NV category seems, if anything, to be hardening (see ‘Shipments by category’ table, p46), with MV not getting a look in. At 78.5% of total shipments in 2020 for all NV, that’s a huge volume of bottles, each having a story to tell.
Recently, however, there has been a quiet revolution, in the top echelons at least, with the aim of recognising, promoting and celebrating the diversity on display. Non-vintage, if one stares hard at the term, is something of an empty phrase – of course there has been a vintage involved in the process! What’s more, all growers will, by definition, use more than one vintage in their NV wine – multi-vintage, in other words. It seems, at first blush, quite logical to give more recognition to this term. Champagne, say its defenders, should be seen as more than a simple sparkling wine used to lubricate a thousand drinks receptions, and thus little different from so many fizzy wines around the world: Champagne is more complex; Champagne is different…
END/BEGINNING OF AN ERA
The French term ‘brut sans année’ is maybe a little clearer, but only just. And it is against this term that Champagne Louis Roederer chef de cave Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon has launched his now oft-quoted broadside. ‘This is the end of the era for brut sans année,’ he has declared; ‘this is the new era of the multi-vintage.’
His comments were made at the July launch of Roederer’s Collection 242, a wine which replaces its long-established
