Which years are vintage in Champagne?

Whenever there has been a perfect grape growing period and harvest, it is almost certain that the Champagne region will declare a vintage. So what does vintage actually mean, more so it's usage within Champagne production.

Vintage simply means that the wine inside of the bottle is of one single year over a mixture of blends from different years being used. When a Champagne is a vintage, it will be clearly mentioned on the bottle label and a year will be stated. Bottles without a year are likely to be a non-vintage (NV) Champagne. Many people think of the word vintage as it is more commonly used, a word to describe the period of origin of an item, usually of several years / decades past - Examples are vintage clothing or vintage cars.

On most occasions, every Champagne producer will declare certain exceptional years a vintage, though there can be differences of opinion and certain years will see some releasing vintages and others not. There is no set rule, neither requirement, that a Champagne house should declare a vintage. It can be regarded that every year is a vintage year and each is simply graded from 0 to 5 stars with the 5 stars being the exceptional ones. Over the recent years there have been quite a few 5 star vintages including: 2022, 2018, 2012, 2008, 2002.

If we look back at the history of vintages of Champagne, from today and back over 100 years, we will not see any noticeable pattern and as it is all down to mother nature to decide. Here is a list of Champagne better vintages over the past 100 years:

1926

1928

1929

1934

1937

1943

1945

1947

1949

1953

1955

1959