I have very limited experience aging Champagne. I have engaged in short term aging of a number of very neutral tasting low priced Champagne, because they weren’t interesting enough to keep opening, and repeatedly found myself shocked by how they were completely transformed with 18-24 months of additional bottle age. I am wondering if vintage Champagne with long lees aging follows a similar trajectory. I understand in general they will be capable of aging for many more years than a basic NV Cuvee, but will they taste radically different at three years post disgorgment than at one year? Sorry for the basic question.
I don’t think this is a basic question but actually quite a complex question.
I agree with you, young and low priced champagnes can appear uninteresting when tasted too early, but give them a few years in the cellar they gain in depth and complexity and turn into really interesting bottles. The best example of this for me is Camille Saves, the entry level champagne is nice but give it a few years and it is amazing.
The basic rule of thumb, the longer the time on the lees, the longer the champagne needs to recover from the degorgement. The degorgement date alone is of little value, it is important to know the base year and date or month of tirage, this tells us how long the champagne spent on the lees.
Vintage is difficult to generalise. The better the vintage, the longer the aging potential. At the same time, if one looks at weaker vintages, they still have the potential to age. 2011 was written off, but for me the Jacquesson 739 is really nice to drink now.
Also Dosage is important. A lot of people do not take Moet et Chandon seriously with their high dosage, I have had vintage champagnes from them from the 70s which were fantastic. There are other discussions about low dosage/zero dosage a complicated subject. My advice would be if buying low dosage champagnes to try them regularly and follow the evolution. Nothing worse than laying down low dosage champagnes and to discover in a few years they have lost the fruit and are pretty undrinkable except for specialists.
Also Sulphur, more and more producers are reducing the amount of sulphur, to what effect? Will these champagnes age?
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Many more experienced tasters of vintage champagnes here, but in my comparisons of same vintage bubbly over time, I have also found a general improvement from at least a few years of time after release/disgorgement. My most frequent same vintage comparisons are from domestic Roederer Estate, the L’ermitage…to me, these tend to gain a lot 7-8 years after release. The 2007s really blossomed last year for example (disgorged 2014-15?).
Anecdotal and less repeated data points, but same general parameters have applied to basically all champagnes, though the 2009 and 2012 DP were both spectacular to me soon after release…
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A bit, but with high quality vintage Champs, 1-3 years is just a baby. Typically the best vintages don’t even start shedding their baby fat for 5-10 years and some need 20 to get in the zone.
for me, aging after release softens edges, makes the mousse less aggressive, deepens the wine, making it more gentle and persistent. I’ve rarely seen a disadvantage.
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Thank you all for responding. I ask because I had a debate with myself last night about opening a 2014 Special Club that was disgorged 14 months prior. I am not equipped with a long term cellar and this bottle shape foreclosed the
possibility of hanging on to it for a year or two in my 36 bottle wine fridge, and realized I didn’t know if that limited amount of aging would have any appreciable effect anyway. The wine, incidentally, was probably the greatest bottle I have ever had the pleasure of consuming, which only served to enhance my confusion as to the importance of disgorgement dates in vintage bottles.
I have many bottles of 2013 Mailly Extra Brut. There are no disgorgement dates on them and they all have been at very different levels of relative maturity. That could be explained by other factors, but has helped me feel confused about the topic of disgorgement.
I almost always prefer Champagnes that have a year on the cork to those that have been more recently disgorged. This is true up and down the range. Beyond that, there is more integration and broadening of the flavor profile and that is something I tend to enjoy watching unfold. To your question about being “radically different”, I think that the amount of transformation in wines that were designed to be aged (think Dom Perignon as one example) will be drastic over a longer time span than 3 years. Keeping up with the Dom Perignon example, 2008 was fantastic at release but has since gone into a phase where the up front fruit no longer matches the structural components and the development of characteristics that come with bottle age hasn’t set in, so I am waiting patiently for a few more years before I check back in. I agree with what @D_Pennet had to say about low/zero dosage wines. I have had a few I’ve really enjoyed but have no real sense of how they develop in the bottle because my limited results of trying to see what happens have been all over the map.
Cheers,
fred
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So would a Cuvee such as Dom p2/p3 or Lanson Noble, which see decades long lees aging and are disgorged three years prior to release, be a mature wine on release? I realize they can continue to age for another two decades, but would the cuvees on release have enough mature aromas and flavors that one could legitimately refer to them as mature wines, even if not at theoretical peak?
Etirely different question, but while I am thinking about extended aging on the lees, isn’t there a point of diminishing returns? What does 15 years lees aging get you that 6 to 8 years doesn’t? Does it do more than make a wine creamy and adding overt pastry notes? I have been drinking a lot of the “prestige cuvee” from Tsarine, which only sees three years on the lees, and is defined by it’s creaminess. I use milkshake as a descriptor. It’s not as bready or yeasty as other champagnes in the price range, but it also isn’t lacking in autolytic flavors. Unless there is other tertiary flavor development happening in this anerobic environment, or a softening of the structure, I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the rationale for such extended aging. I know the beat way is to go out and drink these wines, but those two bottles would be an $800 aquisition.
No, not at all. Lees aging is almost like a time capsule in my experience. They taste fresh as a daisy and can be extremely tight right after disgorgment. They greatly benefit from a few more years on the cork to loosen up just like any good Champ. In time, the extra lees aging will come out and create added complexity between the original release and it can afford one the opportunity to drink a 50 year-old Champ the way it would have been enjoyed 40 years ago.
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I think one of the highlights of a champagne drinker is visiting a winery and have them degorge an old bottle and drink immediately. The freshness regardless of age is amazing. Collin in Vertus offer this service.
I am not sure if there is a real advantage to extended lees aging other than moneymaking. For me a good example is Jacquesson. The Degorge tardive tastes really fresh when released but if you age it two or three years and then taste parallel to a properly stored bottle of the 7** series from the same vintage, the difference is not really that great.
Bedel does this with the Entre Ciel et Terre, the Entre is with short lee aging, the Autrefois is basically the Entre Ciel et terre with 14 years aging on the lees. Bedel then holds the Autrefois for about 18 months post degorgement before releasing. A really interesting experience. The same applies with the Dis Vin secret, The L’Ame de Terre does not have quite the same lees aging but one gets the chance to taste a matured Dis Vin Secret without having to age them.
Alongside Bedel.that is if one does not want to pay the inflationary prices of Dom Perignon, I would really recommend trying Tarlant’s Cuvee Louis Brut Nature Vendages 2002 + 2003 another interesting champagne with long lees aging.
I have quite a few lower priced Champagnes in my cellar, sure some mid-range Ch. and less high class Presige cuvees:
Almost ALL improve with some years of bottle age, at least they are more interesting and complex … not only (more or less) fruity. 3 years is even a bit short, 4/5/6+ years is better in my experience.
Sure, after 10-15+ years the bubbles are fewer and softer - and the Champagnes become more a (white/rosé) wine, but they gain complexity even at a lower level.
When 25, 30, 40+ years old they show more of the toasty, bisquity deep yellow character and only few bubbles … but (I´ve stated that here before) IF you don´t like the almost still wine character but like the nose and taste of age you can add a (tiny) bit of younger Champagne of a comparable character to have it more lively again (no necessity, but a possibility).
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I used to cellar wines for the long term, and while I wouldn’t say I disliked the results, more often than not I just wanted to drink something fresher. For me the sweet spot was just as the wine was on the cusp of maturity, still having having some primary fruit and energy, but gaining integration and depth as the flavors were just starting to turn secondary. With this taste preference in mind, how long would a high quality vintage Champagne (not necessarily a prestige cuvee) need to age on cork?
I’m kind of in the same boat in terms of being more familiar with “fresh” wines as opposed to what some would call “fully mature” wines that I would probably say were mostly dead. But top flight, top vintage Champagne needs serious cork time to open up. It’s not about freshness, it’s that they can just be so shut down. But if you have some soft vintages like 06, you can drink them on release. Mostly they need 4-6 or more years as Gerhard mentioned.
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That’s not radically different from my conceptualization before I started getting serious about Champagne a few months ago. My experiences, however, with most vintage Champagne has been a pretty pretty open knit expression on release, though there have certainly been dramatic exceptions. With that said, I have only invested about $1500 in vintage bottles thus far and have a lot more (delicious) homework to do. Thanks again everyone for weighing in. Dunning-Kruger strikes again!
I’d say 10-20 years, depending on the style and the producer. Apart from the very entry-level cuvées, 5 years does very little to the wine and you might see some evolution with 5-10 years. That “cusp of maturity” can be still quite far off at that point.
Does anyone know if there’s a reason to avoid opening sparkling wine just a couple of weeks following disgorgement (other than the wine showing young)? I have a bottle of 2018 Ultramarine that was disgorged about 2 weeks ago and tonight is my 5th year wedding anniversary, so trying to decide if I should open this.
2 weeks seems very short and probably not enough time for everything to integrate. As @Brad_Baker has said, it is a risky proposition to open something so close to disgorgement.
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I always believe that, if there is any reason, really, to think it might not show its best, and you can open something else, open something else.
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Congrats! For a special event, your expectations will be even higher, so I would go with a known quantity to not be disappointed.
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Put me in the boat of many people’s “mature” champagne is my just getting started. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bottle that had less than 3-5 years under cork that I though wouldn’t get better with more time.
I’ve got a 1990 Fleury that spent 27 years on the lees that I"m hoping to drink at some point this year. That’s the type of champagne that gets me excited.
It’s interesting though with longer lees aging, I personally think that wines like Bolly RD don’t age as well as the original vintage wines. Some goes for things like '95 Heidsieck BdM where I think the gold label was a better wine that aged better than the later plastic label release (which I still absolutely adore).
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