When it comes to valuing older bottles of Champagne, in deed any wines, one of the most important factors affecting the price is the bottle condition. The bottle condition will determine the quality of the wine inside and also have an effect on the overall value of the Champagne.
Most older vintage Champagnes, outside of having rested for their entire lives in the original cellars of the producers house in France, will be harder to gage the condition of and a closer inspection will be required so to determine condition of the wine inside the bottle. Is this bottle of Champagne worthy to be opened and tasted, or should it remain simply a trophy display bottle?
There are basic tips to adopt when inspecting Champagne for bottle condition:
- Bottle storage history from the seller: Who are you buying from, is it simply an auction on eBay or you have found a bottle for sale at a local house clearance auction and there is no history behind the bottle? Is the seller a wine collector and you are welcomed into their wine cellar to pick out the bottle in question that you have purchased? Try to ask the seller if they have receipts of purchase or at least a believable story behind the wine.
- Bottle condition: Does the bottle look like it has passed many hands with worn foil area around the neck and any colours on the label showing discoloration thus likely exposure to strong unatural light / sunlight? Does the cork area show any leakage over the years of wine?
- Wine level inside the bottle: The older a wine becomes then we must expect some lowering in the wine level, the more this level has lowered then the more suspicion we must hold as it will mean that wine has escaped from the bottle via the cork - How has it been stored! A Champagne of 50+ years we can expect some loss of wine, but we should not be accepting anymore that 5% lowering - when we see a quarter loss or more then we should be hearing alarm bells.
- Wine colour: By holding a Champagne bottle up to the light / clear daylight background you will see the clarity and wine levels of the wine inside. Even with darker green and brown bottles, light will show through the wine inside so we should be ideally looking for clean and clear to expect the best quality possible inside - If we see misty/smoky to darker brown then we should expect a degrade of wine quality. Remember that a wine might be scored highly by expert wine critics, though most times they will be tasting a perfect bottle that came either from the original cellars or has a complete professional storage history - the same bottle might not score anywhere near it's given amount should the storage history be poor and quality of wine inside thus effected.
