Champagne | 2021 vintage
Let’s start with our traditional reminder. It is important to remember the two following things when assessing the most recent vintage of Champagne. The first thing to bear in mind is that the large majority of the Champagne bottles consumed are not vintage wines but are a result of blending wines from many different vintages. These blends, created according to the respective qualities of the varieties used, are supposed to bring an almost constant parity of flavours between the producers’ releases. Therefore, the qualities (or the lack thereof) of a single vintage do not determine how good the end product will be. The second thing is that Champagne is a sparkling wine and there are only two ways to judge the true quality of a vintage. Either the current year’s still wines are tasted a few months after vinification before the wines go through their second vinification process (but this does not give a complete overview of the finished product), or the wine can be tasted at the end of a vintage Champagne’s production cycle which is many years later...
The three previous vintages almost made us forget that some years can be cool and wet in the Champagne region. But 2021 served as a reminder to all the region’s winemakers, who endured a very trying season. The early budburst following almost summer-like weather at the end of March had disastrous consequences when the vines were later hit by repeated frosts (no fewer than 12 days of frost between 6 April and 3 May!) The subsequent weeks brought little reprieve as heavy rainfall alternated with localised hailstorms, except during the flowering period in June.
Rainfall reached unprecedented levels in the region in 2021, notably during torrential downpours in mid-July. Such conditions represented the perfect breeding ground for mildew, which had never before affected the Champagne region with such severity. The black grapes (Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier) were hit even harder than the Chardonnay. Yields, having already been affected by the frost, were further reduced, resulting in one of the smallest harvests in the region in recent decades. Overall, the quality of the wines, when the grapes were properly sorted, is good, but certainly not outstanding. In many cases, this means that the vintage likely won’t be declared.
