And there is no shortage of choice on the market, as I discovered when tasting almost 250 wines in London this August for Club Oenologique’s 2024 Champagne Report (focused on grandes marques, other houses and cooperatives). My top-scoring wines – at a near-perfect 99 points – were both late-disgorged prestige cuvées with significant lees-ageing times. In Laurent-Perrier’s multi-vintage Grand Siècle Les Réserves Iteration No. 20, the 1999, 1997 and 1996 harvest wines meld into a perfect ensemble with the full-on deliciousness of the magnum effect. Dom Pérignon Vintage 2006 Plénitude 2 took me by surprise, as on the whole, this vintage has never been a personal favourite of mine. Yet the extra lees ageing has really worked its wonders; I awarded the P2 three more points than the original disgorgement P1 bottle that I also sampled. Overall, I tasted a wealth of exquisite late-disgorged bottles, which I will tell you more about in some follow-up stories for Club Oenologique later this autumn.

Looking at original disgorgements, Rare Champagne 2013 was the star of the Chardonnay-Pinot Noir blends, still holding back somewhat, but charming in its pure and radiant fruitiness and lacey refinement. For me, the best-performing vintage blend (rather than prestige cuvée) was Louis Roederer Vintage 2015 in all its toasty glory and fruity depth. It has built up a gravitas and deliciousness during time under cork, which restores some faith to the ageing potential of the 2015 vintage, typically pestered by a certain vegetal austerity.

Prestige cuvées and vintages are exciting, but one must not forget that commercially, the bread and butter of every producer is the brut non-vintage, which may make up as much as 90 percent of a producer’s output. It was a tight battle between numerous outstanding non-vintages (which increasingly come with an edition number or base year declaration on the bottle, to my great satisfaction), but there were three wines that I was particularly impressed by: the polished-to-perfection Louis Roederer Collection 244 (2019 base), the silky-intense Bruno Paillard Première Cuvée and the joyously drinkable Palmer & Co La Réserve (2019 base).

Ruinart hit the jackpot back in 2022 with the release of its 2010 Dom Ruinart, its first vintage aged under natural cork rather than crown cap. This year, I was happy to discover that the magic of ‘sur liège’ has repeated itself for the 2013 vintage – a glorious, yet superbly youthful wine still asking for patience. While waiting for the Dom Ruinart to reveal all its oomph, do profit from the immediate deliciousness of the Charles Heidsieck Blanc de Blancs Magnum (2018 base), for me, the best performing non-vintage blanc de blancs in the Grande Marque Champagne Report 2024.

For the scarcer and stylistically more demanding blanc de noirs style, the usual suspects – Bollinger PN series VZ19 (its best edition yet) and Piper-Heidsieck Essentiel Blanc de Noirs (2019 base) – fared beautifully. I was pleased to rate Thiénot x Penfold’s Grand Cru Blanc de Noirs 2013 equally highly, appreciating its complex notes of gunpowder and pencil shavings and its age-mellowed palate. It’s good to see a new contender in the blanc de noirs category.

Ruinart also triumphed in the rosé field, with its spicy-generous and exotically scented Dom Ruinart Rosé 2009. This makes me thirst for its upcoming vintages that will have aged on lees under natural cork, similarly to its white wines. While prestige cuvée rosés represent the ultra-luxury of Champagne with their scarcity and Burgundian Pinot complexity, vintage rosés are a small and ever-shrinking category. Moët & Chandon is gladly loyal to the category with the characterful and age-worthy Grand Vintage 2016 representing the wine’s 46^th iteration. For non-vintage rosés, my palate was rewarded by two true classics, Bollinger Rosé and Laurent-Perrier Cuvée Rosé.

Last but not the least, I savoured several Grande Marque single-vineyard Champagnes. This mushrooming category is largely considered grower-producer territory, but not exclusively so. The category pioneer from 1935, Philipponnat Clos des Goisses, is one of Champagne’s ultimate terroir wines. The 2014 vintage is not its most monumental, yet I am enchanted by its early blooming, sweetly scented charm.

Read on for the Grande Marque Champagne Report 2024, and stay tuned over the coming weeks as I continue to dissect the trends unearthed from across these tastings.

Tasting notes and scores from The Grande Marque Champagne Report 2024 (featuring only those wines scoring 88 points and above) are available to all registered users of The Collection, the online home of our premium wine and spirits content. To register, click here. Don’t forget to consult The Grower Champagne Report 2024 for further analysis of the latest releases from the region.