A month in wine
Champagne producers have said 2020 may complete a rare ‘trilogy’ of top-quality vintages, but there are set to be fewer bottles made after a drop in global sales this year led to tight limits being placed on harvest size.
Champagne houses and growers settled on a maximum yield of 8,000kg of grapes per hectare for 2020, one of the lowest in recent times and equivalent to about 230m bottles in all, said regional wine council the Comité Champagne.
The decision came just as pickers were preparing to enter the vineyards for this year’s harvest, which began on 17 August, two weeks ahead of the 10-year average.
While hot weather and drought-like conditions were already expected to mean a smaller harvest in some areas, the move to curb potential production reflects weaker consumer demand.
‘Champagne, a wine of joie de vivre, conviviality and celebration, is particularly affected by the global economic crisis linked to Covid-19 and is suffering a historic drop in its shipments,’ said the Comité Champagne.
There is, however, growing excitement about the quality of the 2020 vintage.
‘After an amazing 2018 and 2019, we are blessed to bottle another great year,’ said Hervé Dantan, chef de cave at Champagne Lanson.
‘Of course, we have to be patient and see how the wines will evolve, but we are very optimistic it will be another famous trilogy with three very good consecutive vintages,’ said Dantan, who compared the situation to the ‘trilogy’ of 1988, 1989 and 1990.
He added that picking this year took longer than expected due to varying levels of ripeness across vineyards.
‘2020 is the year of Pinot Noir,’ said Sébastien Le Golvet, chef de cave at Champagne house Henri Giraud. ‘[There are] not big yields this year, but exceptional quality; when tasting the juices you could already sense extraordinary potential.’
At Champagne Taittinger, which owns 288ha of vines, vineyard manager Christelle Rinville said she was delighted with harvest quality. Yields were in-line with estimates made in June, she said, noting ‘fewer bunches but larger ones, which make picking considerably easier’.
Regarding the yield limit, fourth-generation family member Clovis Taittinger said: ‘We have pressed and now stocked and stored the totality of our own harvest. We have not lost any grapes in any parcels and we have been able to make some reserves with magnificent quality grapes.’
• While Champagne lovers will have to wait several years for the top 2020 cuvées to age, one new name to watch this year is a collaboration between vaunted grower-house Champagne Pierre Péters and the co-owners of Château Miraval in Provence – Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and the Perrin family.
They planned to release the first Fleur de Miraval rosé Champagne on 15 October, at €340 per bottle (£310). Only 20,000 bottles have been produced initially.
‘Fleur de Miraval is the culmination of five years of work,’ said Rodolphe Péters, who runs his family’s 20ha estate, which has some 16ha in grand cru sites.
Combining 75% Chardonnay and 25% Pinot Noir, the wine was created using a ‘rosé de saignée’ from Pinot Noir, rather than the more usual method in Champagne of blending red wine into white.
‘Given the aromatic profile we were looking for in the Pinot Noirs, the saignée method seemed an altogether more natural choice than using classic red winemaking techniques that would have produced much riper, richer tones,’ Péters told Decanter.