I have recently started to take note of some big Champagne houses offer some high end Champagne collections that claim to be aged 10 year + in their own cellar before releasing onto the market, while making with a certain vintage of harvest. My question is - what exactly makes these expensive Champagne different than those regular vintage bottles that was bought back then at release and existed until today? Basically, do we simply pay the high premium for buying a bottle just to have the Champagne hoses cellar these bottles in their own properties?
I’m not sure exactly which wines you are referring to, since you didn’t include any examples. But one that I think might meet your criteria is the recent introduction by Philipponnat of their Clos des Goisses “Long Vieillissement” bottling. They launched these just last year, with the vintages of 1992 and 1993 being the first released. These bottles were aged 25 years on the lees, prior to disgorgement in 2018. So in this case the difference relative to their traditional Clos de Goisses bottles bought from those vintages long ago would be aging on the less rather than after disgorgement. I’m not sure what others are offering, but perhaps you can provide some examples or the Champagne experts on the board can weigh in.
Commercial disclosure: we manage U.S. mailing list sales for Philipponnat.
Thanks Kevin for your response, one other example is the Louis Roederer Cristal Vinotheque 1996 that is recently released. You answer hits the point. I suppose the “on lees” part can only be done at Champagne houses themselves, thus the flavour difference, etc. I initially though they would be 1996 harvest sitting in LR house and only recently got release in the market, but I confirmed that they do sit them on-lees for 14 years, followed by 7-8 more years of post-disgorgement cellaring. Definitely took a lot of work and patience!
Philipponnat has been doing this with Clos des Goisses for decades but have labeled it differently. Prior to this label, they just noted the disgorgement date on the back label.
Many houses have late release programs including Dom Perignon - first unlabeled, then “RD”, then Oenothque and now P2 and P3 - which all had extended lees aging, slightly different dosage and some had corks vs crown capsules.
Krug has their Collection series and did a few vintages specially disgorged for British Airways, major wine vendors and for some private clients that they didn’t label as “Collection” but usually had a designation on the back label. Most of those bottles had extended lees aging.
Bollinger has their R.D. wines and as I said, many other houses do as well.
So, to answer your question, the price point is different not just because they cellared the wines post-disgorgement for an additional length of time, but also because they are slightly different wines, many have a rarity factor and especially for much older vintages, a provenance factor.
Ray isn’t there a freshness factor as well? I’ve read that lees have a powerful preservative effect, which means that a recently disgorged bottle is much less likely to taste tired vs. an original disgorgement
I guess this can cut both ways if the recently disgorged bottle has less of the complexity that comes from bottle aging
Hi Ray, thank you for the detailed explanation and insights! It certainly is very interesting to learn that some Champagne houses offer unique products to specific clientele.
That’s what I was alluding to when I mentioned “provenance factor” for older vintages. '69 DP P3 yes, but i’m not worried about original release bottles of '02 DP being tired compared to '02 P2.
