Vintage Champagne, And Why We Need To Open It Right This Very Minute

If there’s a reliable, designated opportunity to open a bottle of vintage Champagne, in all of 2021 anywhere around the world, it’s within the next 24 to 36 hours.

Who’s in?

[Here’s me, waving my hand enthusiastically.]

That isn’t only because it’s nearly (or actually, in some places) New Year’s Eve, and I’m confident I’m not alone in wishing 2021 good riddance.

It also isn’t only because I’m a wine lover and an observer of the wine industry, which translates to a keen fascination with the development of the region of Champagne’s environmental and commercial sustainability, both of which have been called into question this year more visibly than most others.

Those are very good reasons indeed to bring out the vintage bubbly, and deeply savor a glass or two either alone or with another you love.

But here’s the main reason why I wave my hand enthusiastically at even the barest suggestion of a glass of vintage Champagne: It makes me happy.

That’s it.

There is nothing more complicated about it than that.

Vintage Champagne makes me happy. The sounds of Champagne (vintage and otherwise, to be honest) make me happy, from the opening POP of the bottle, to the mousse flowing into the glass, to the whisper of it in my ears and across my tongue as I take my first sip.

The idea of Champagne makes me happy too, from the thick glass that withstands the atmospheric pressure inside the bottle, to the ritual of pouring it slowly into a glass, to the now-well-documented histories and legends of the widows who advanced its commercial success and preserved its culture, to the non-traditional and welcome new faces of the region who will progress it even further.

The taste of Champagne makes me happy, and vintage Champagne all the moreso. Can enthusiastic consumers taste the difference between Champagne and vintage versions? It takes some doing, and practice makes perfect (hint, hint), but as my friend Donna says, she “mostly buys (and drinks) nonvintage champagne because it’s less expensive and still delicious.” Yet when we do open a vintage option, as we did last week with the 2006 Champagne Henriot Cuvée Hemera, the “complex spectrum of aroma and flavor” is recognizable and noteworthy. It reminds Donna, she said, of “why a vintage year is worth the splurge.” More on this particular bottle in the follow-up post to today’s article.

But in the meantime, it’s worth lingering a bit more over the taste of Champagne, especially in terms of how it differs from what we might smell through the aromas in the same glass. Smelling vintage Champagne is one thing while tasting it, even immediately afterward, can be something quite different. That complexity and layers of experience is, for Donna and myself and perhaps yourselves as well, what boosts vintage Champagne to “splurge-worthy” status.

For the 2006 Henriot Hemera, for example, what we taste is actually quite different, and quite distinct, from what we smell. What we smelled were some familiar notes like white flowers, buttered toast and vanilla, but what we tasted in a very contrasting way were the sensations of fruit and spices including grapefruit, ripe peaches and candied fruit.

Happiest of all? Sharing vintage Champagne with friends.

Let’s be honest. If we’re going to open something as special as a vintage Champagne, such as the Henriot Hemera from 2006, then we’re likely to want to share it with friends and loved ones who get just as, if not more excited, about it as we do.

That’s what makes me happiest of all.

It’s why that specific bottle is what we brought with us to dinner just before the Christmas holiday, when our friend Jeff (who is an excellent cook) had prepared a traditional French cassoulet. The evening had been in the works for a while, and it added up very much to an Occasion worthy of vintage Champagne. It was partly the four days it took to fully prepare the cassoulet, that iconic, hearty, slow-simmered mélange of duck confit, sausage, pork, and white beans, and it was partly the weeks before hand that it took to shop or source each of the ingredients.

It wasn’t just me who was happy about that cassoulet served that evening with that particular vintage Champagne. “That was a gorgeously fermented bottle of celebration you shared with us,” Jeff said. “For me, good champagne is about getting together and having fun.”