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We love a challenge at Hackstons, so when one of our clients asked us to put together a guide to the best Champagnes ever produced, we jumped at the chance to share our thoughts.
Even with years of training and qualifications, putting together a guide to the best Champagnes ever produced is a daunting prospect. But, it was also a really enjoyable project that threw up some highlights that we wanted to share more widely.
What follows is our team’s answer to a deceptively simple question – which Champagne deserves to be called the best ever produced? We’ve leaned towards Blanc de Blancs, prized for their precision and finesse, while including a handful of Blanc de Noirs and blends for weight, structure and balance.
Some of the bottles mentioned can be bought from us today. Others are so rare that even we have to go looking – which is exactly the kind of challenge we love to seek out for our clients. Read on to find out our thoughts on the best Champagnes ever produced…
Before we get to the bottles, it’s worth understanding the language that separates a good Champagne from a genuinely great one.
Grande Marque: a Grande Marque is one of Champagne’s large, historic houses – the Krugs, Bollingers and Moëts of the world. These houses own vineyards but also buy fruit from growers across the region, blending across villages, vineyards and, for non-vintage wines, multiple years to achieve a consistent house style year after year.
Vintage Champagne: a vintage Champagne is made from grapes harvested in a single year, and only in years the house considers good enough to bottle separately. Rather than smoothing out a house style, it captures the character of one specific growing season.
Bottle size and ageing: Champagne matures at different speeds depending on the bottle it’s held in. Larger formats such as Magnum (1.5L) and Jeroboam (3L) have a lower ratio of oxygen to wine, so they age more slowly and often develop greater freshness and longevity. Standard and smaller bottles mature faster and tend to be made for drinking sooner.
Lees ageing: after the second fermentation happens inside the bottle, the wine sits on its spent yeast cells, known as lees, for months or years before disgorgement. This contact is where Champagne picks up its brioche, pastry, toast and nutty character – and the longest lees ageing tends to produce the most complex, most collectable wines.
Founded in Reims in 1843 by Joseph Krug, the house is recognised for its extensive use of individually vinified reserve wines and long cellar ageing. Krug’s production centres on multi-vintage blending, with Grande Cuvée forming the core of the range alongside the single-vineyard wines Clos du Mesnil and Clos d’Ambonnay, and its vintage Champagne. Both these wines spend around 12 to 15 years on lees before release, and production is measured in hundreds of bottles rather than thousands.
This is Krug’s tribute to a single, walled 1.84-hectare Grand Cru plot in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, first planted with Chardonnay in 1698. Enclosed by the village itself, the clos has its own microclimate that consistently delivers wines of exceptional purity, precision, tension and distinctive chalk-driven minerality with remarkable ageing potential.
Best vintages:
This is Krug’s rarest Champagne, produced in tiny quantities from a single walled vineyard in Ambonnay. It gives the most complete expression of Pinot Noir, warmed by the shelter of its historic walls into something concentrated and site-specific.
Availability: if you’d like to experience the Krug house style today, Krug Vintage Brut 2011 and Krug Grande Cuvée 171ème Édition are available to shop online now.
Reversed seasons shaped a blend of 46% Pinot Noir, 37% Chardonnay and 17% Meunier, then aged for over a decade to bring depth and poise. White fruits, star fruit and citrus lead the way, joined by hints of liquorice and fresh basil, before pastry, stewed fruit and a touch of smoke unfold gradually. The finish carries notes of sea salt and grapefruit that linger with quiet confidence.
Krug Grande Cuvée 171ème Édition is a blend of 146 wines from 11 different years, the base wine from 2016 forms 58% of the blend, while the remaining 42% is sourced from Krug’s ageing library, the oldest dating back to 1998. A stay of around seven years in Krug’s cellars gives this Édition its remarkable expression and elegance.
Clos du Mesnil and Clos d’Ambonnay rarely surface on the open market – when they do, we’d be glad to source a bottle for you. Email us at [email protected] and we’ll start the search.
Bollinger has been based in Aÿ since 1829. Its celebrated Vieilles Vignes Françaises vintage Champagne is one of Champagne’s most historically significant wines. It is produced from two tiny Grand Cru parcels – Chaudes Terres and Clos Saint-Jacques – home to some of Champagne’s last surviving ungrafted Pinot Noir vines. The vineyards are worked entirely by hand and remain among the rarest viticultural sites in Champagne.
A Blanc de Noirs aged in the cellar for at least five years. But Vieilles Vignes Françaises are not only remarkable for their flavours: they are the memory of heritage, a symbol bearing an almost-forgotten memory of the Champagne of yesteryear.
£1,680.00
Availability: We have limited stock of the exceptional Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2002, available to buy now.
Founded in 1743, Moët & Chandon is a Grande Marque based in Épernay. Dom Pérignon is the house’s prestige vintage-only Champagne, first released commercially in 1936 from the 1921 vintage. Every bottle is held back for extended lees ageing before release, and the house periodically returns to exceptional vintages to release them again, later, as Plénitude 2 and Plénitude 3. P3 is the ultimate evolution of Dom Pérignon, released after prolonged lees ageing to reveal the fullest expression of a single exceptional vintage
Produced under the house’s strict “vintage only” philosophy and led by Chef de Cave Vincent Chaperon, it reflects one of the earliest harvests the region has seen, born from a warm and testing growing season.The near-equal blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay brings balance to that intensity, delivering ripe, sunlit fruit with a brightness and freshness that keeps everything beautifully in check.
£310.00
Availability: Our current-release Dom Pérignon vintages are available to shop online. Plénitude 3 releases are made in very limited quantities and typically allocated before they reach the open market – but get in touch and we’ll do our very best to find one.
Founded in 1776 and renamed under Louis Roederer in 1833, Louis Roederer is a Grande Marque based in Reims. Unlike many major houses, it sources most of its production from its own vineyards, which include a significant holding of Grand Cru and Premier Cru sites. Its portfolio is led by Cristal, alongside vintage and multi-vintage cuvées produced with a strong emphasis on estate-grown fruit.
The generous yet beautifully balanced 2009 vintage combines the richness of the year with Cristal’s hallmark precision and energy.
Golden citrus, ripe white peach and mirabelle plum are layered with toasted hazelnut, chalk, fresh pastry and delicate smoky notes from extended lees ageing. The mousse is effortlessly fine, giving way to a palate of remarkable concentration, crystalline acidity and a persistent mineral finish.
£270.00
Availability: Current-vintage Louis Roederer Cristal Brut is available to shop online now. Vinothèque releases are held back deliberately and released in tiny volumes – one for our sourcing team, if you’re chasing a specific year.
Salon, founded in 1905 in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, makes one Champagne: a vintage Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru, and only in exceptional vintages. Le Mesnil is widely acclaimed as the definitive Blanc de Blancs, expressing the purity and longevity of Chardonnay from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger.
Availability: We can source Salon Le Mesnil Champagne from our network of specialists – just email us with your requests at [email protected].
Jacques Selosse, a grower-producer based in Avize since 1959, does things differently: parcel-by-parcel vinification, fermentation in oak, extended ageing and tiny production, all built around the domaine’s own vineyards in the Côte des Blancs.
Substance is the house’s signature wine and its most distinctive, offering an uncompromising interpretation of Chardonnay, produced on vines sometimes exceeding 60 years of age.
Best disgorgements:
Rather than being defined by a year, it’s defined by its disgorgement –
Produced only in selected vintages, Selosse Millésime captures the individuality of a single harvest through the domaine’s distinctive approach to viticulture and élevage.
Availability: We can source Jacques Selosse Champagne from our network of specialists – just email us with your requests at [email protected].
This list only scratches the surface of what’s possible when building a Champagne collection. Whether you’re starting a collection or refining one that already exists, our WSET-trained team can talk you through vintages, provenance and long-term drinking potential – and where a bottle isn’t in our online range, we’ll go and find it.
Visit us in Knightsbridge, browse Champagne online, or email [email protected] to start a conversation about the collection you’re building.
There’s no single answer – it depends on style, vintage and personal taste. But Champagnes like Krug Clos du Mesnil, Salon Le Mesnil and Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises are consistently named among the greatest ever produced, thanks to their pedigree, rarity and decades-long ageing potential.
A Grande Marque is one of Champagne’s large, established houses, such as Krug, Bollinger or Moët & Chandon, that blends fruit from its own vineyards and from growers across the region to produce a consistent house style.
These wines are made in very small quantities and rarely appear for sale. Hackstons offers a white glove sourcing service, tracking down specific bottles and vintages for clients even when they’re not held in our online range – email [email protected] to start a search.
Blanc de Blancs is made entirely from Chardonnay and tends to be lighter, more precise and more mineral-driven. Blanc de Noirs is made from Pinot Noir and/or Pinot Meunier and typically has greater weight, structure and depth.
Yes. Larger formats like Magnum and Jeroboam have a lower ratio of oxygen to wine, which slows ageing and often results in greater freshness and longevity compared with standard bottles.
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