Speaking of packaging, back labels are very informative now.

Almost all back labels will now tell you when the bottle was disgorged, whether explicitly (Date de Dégorgement), as part of the lot code or through an ID or QR code, so you can find out how long the wine has been taken off the lees—a good indicator of freshness. If you prefer a more mature style, as many champagne insiders do, look for wines that are a few years post-disgorgement.

Older is not always better.

A sentiment that a bottle of flat golden liquid from the 1970s that I tasted at a recent event reminded me. The wines in this guide are all relatively new releases rather than open-market bottles that have been aged extensively post-disgorgement, so they have been preserved by their lees. Even so, there is a clear evolution in something like a Dom Pérignon P2 2004, and if you are looking for fresh fruit and a cleansing mouthfeel you are unlikely to find it in a wine over 10 years old. Notable exceptions: Henriot’s Hemera and Mumm’s Lalou 2008, and Charles Heidsieck Blanc des Millénaires 2007.

Cold champagne is bad, but warm is still worse.

I tried to make sure to time my tasting so that the wines had 5 minutes or so in the glass to warm up after being pulled from the wine fridge (10ºC) and poured because, without that lag time, the wines were too cold to express much and also needed some air. However, the wines I re-tasted after an additional hour in a near-empty glass were, let us say, significantly reduced in quality.

You don’t need tools for opening champagne, but you may want them.

I now feel I have perfected my kit, using thick cotton napkins to hold both the damp bottle and the cork, which saved me blisters and several cuts from sharp foil and caught at least part of the deluge when bottles occasionally frothed over. You may want to wear dishwashing or gardening gloves if you have many bottles to open—in private, of course. For bottles that had been disgorged a while ago and wouldn’t relinquish their corks, I found a simple hinged nutcracker very handy. For those pesky corks secured by staple, the purpose-designed tool I had to gently lever and bend it outwards could have easily been replaced by a flat-handled fork or spoon.

The reason some people think all champagnes are the same is flutes.

I tasted my samples in a Riesling glass, but any small white wine glass will suffice. To confirm that I was right—because it's only fair—I tried comparing samples of Krug, La Grande Dame and Rare in flutes and they were nowhere near as different as they should have been. 

Acidity and bitterness both help balance, but do different things.

As the climate has warmed in Champagne, producers have been trying to utilise bitterness—mainly from the grape skins—for balance. Both acidity and bitterness are so-called “hard” elements that offset “soft” elements like sugar and alcohol, but the acidity is “brightening” while bitterness darkens, affecting when you want to serve the wine and which food it complements. In other words, acid-driven champagnes have the cleansing power to shine before or early in the meal and complement or offset seafood while champagne with a strong bitter element is as good (if not better) as red wine with steak and also great after dinner.

People instinctively know what they like even if they can’t articulate it

Champagne isn’t an explicitly fruity wine and its flavours are hard to distinguish verbally—how many different ways can you say toasty? This is why we have included shapes and colours for each entry which will give you an overall idea of how the wine feels. Try wines of a few different shapes and colour combinations; from experience, even people that claim to not like champagne can find a style that moves them.

Champagne can be better the next day if you store it properly

This is because champagne already has preservative CO2—and intense bubbles are overrated anyway. “Properly” simply means sealed under a good stopper with a silicone bung and metal or plastic clamp. I have yet to find silicone bungs sufficiently secure on their own, as a poor friend of mine whose rib I nearly broke with one can attest. Then, leave it upright in a wine fridge, ideally around 10ºC, or a regular fridge in a pinch. Reductive (the opposite of oxidative) styles of champagne tend to blossom overnight—think Taittinger, Delamotte, P-J Belle Époque, Margaine, Agrapart, or anything else that didn’t smell particularly intense when you first opened it.

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