I thought I had posted this last night but apparently I didnt!
I think that vintage champagne (depending on the bottle, as always), can be a real steal. typically I find a pretty noticeable difference between vintage/NV. Theoretically, the way they are treated SHOULD produce complexity differences. the vintage should be better selected and higher quality juice, as well as better techniques and longer aging (more lees contact and more bottle time before release).
I think the place that is making it harder to see the value is that your post only compared them to the NV offerings and not to the marquis offerings. Vintage bottlings are often treated more similarly to those big name bottlings than they are to the NV, but with a fraction of the price. Take roederer for example: NV: $42, vintage (2010 blanc de bland): $78, Cristal: varies by vintage but typically north of $190.
Matt - thanks this makes sense, and makes me want to buy a sampling for a handful of producers and compare NV, vintage and tete. Frustratingly hard though given the timing of releases and the likely edginess of newly released high end champagnes. Any tips?
The apt comparison keeping with the OP as I understand it is vintage Roederer Brut, not the BdB. ‘08 Brut is still available in CA between $60-65. (No doubt, I do think the 2010 BdB is also very very good based on 3 different tastings in the last year.)
For Roederer I personally don’t think Cristal is worth the bump from the basic vintage wine to Cristal. The Brut is so good young and ages fantastically well at about 1/3-1/2 the price.
Thanks all. If I squint, it does seem like some general differences between growers and big houses are perceived per my original query, with the houses showing a bigger jump from NV to vintage stuff.
A fun (and possibly costly) follow-up sub-question could be:
What’s your favorite vintage brut champagne (non-tete du cuvée/special club division)?
I do agree on that. it was a kinda funny reason that I used the BdB instead: I was just quickly skimming through a website to find some price examples and the vintage roederer brut that I saw was CHEAPER than the NV (and from the USA instead of Champagne). i switched gears just because I didn’t think that would help make sense of the situation at all!
I believe the answer to your question is one you have to do. Its all a matter of taste of preferences IMHO. The recent trend to have more site specific champagne is suggesting vintage over blends/ cuvees. I certainly admire the Grande Marques for having continually good releases of their house style one after another and at the same time, love the ones that come from specific vineyards such as Philipponnats Clos des Goisses and Pierre Peters` Les Chetillons.
I don’t think you can make any conclusions on whether a grower/small producer or larger producer offers better value/quality/uptick in regards to their vintage vs. NV. You just can’t make this type of generalization. It is very specific to the producer and you can some up with plenty of examples on both sides.
Site specific wines are very different from vintage wines and there are many site specific wines that are NV. Selosse’s Lieux-Dits series is a great example of this. In fact, you can make a good case that NV wines that blur the climate effects of individual years are a better example of site specific expression. I happen to fall into this camp as most single vintage wines showcase that year’s particular climate above and beyond anything else; the vineyard expression is there, but it plays backup.
Roederer
Pol Roger
Saves
Billiot
Vilmart Grand Cellier (could be considered a Tete de Cuvee)
Chartogne-Taillet Heurtebise (BdB) but I liked the single vintage blend they did before they started to bottle by vineyard
Henriot
Good question…have you heard about the P (some number here) series? It is their late disgorgement program where they would like consumers to enjoy their Dom Perignon at one of the three key levels of development that they have identified, called “plenitudes” or something like that. Basically, it’s a release of late disgorged bottles and I think 1996 is Plenitude 2 maybe? In any case, I would not be surprised if they had ten or twenty thousand bottles of the 1996 waiting to be released at the right “plenitude”. I’ve also heard you can get late disgorged '64s which I think would be a treat. So there will be all sorts of bottlings of 1996 Dom Perignon with all sorts of different disgorgement dates and still probably many more to be released. Gird your loins…
I’ve had P2 on a couple of occasions, looked it up at one point but clearly didn’t digest it all. OK, so they’ve got a bunch waiting around for the right time. Neat, I’d be up to try it. (though prefer ‘fresher’ champagne, myself).
