Vintage Champagne Gifts

It means the Champagne comes from one declared harvest rather than a blend across several years, and that year appears on the label. Houses declare a vintage only when they judge the growing season good enough, typically three or four times a decade. Everything else goes into the non-vintage blend.

Sometimes, and that is the catch worth knowing before you promise it to anyone. Houses declare only some years, and older vintages sell through, so a particular birth year may not exist as a current release at all. Check what is listed on this page rather than assuming a year can be found.

Because it is built the other way round. Krug blends wines from many different years, some of them decades old, to make something more complete than a single harvest allows. Laurent-Perrier Grand Siècle works on the same principle, blending three complementary vintages. Both sit at the top of their houses while carrying no year on the label.

Longer than non-vintage - often a decade or more from release, kept cool, dark and lying down. That is part of why it works as a gift with weight behind it: it can be opened now or put away until the anniversary it was bought to mark.