This has been an extremely difficult year for Champagne – spring frosts and mildew from a rainy summer have caused many growers to lose 20-80% of their crops. But despite that, the harvest begins!
Watch this fascinating short video to get a feel for what will be happening in Champagne in the next few weeks, September 6-27:.
You may know that my blogging and interview partner, Mona Elyafi, and I are studying for our Champagne Master Level certifications, so we really geek out with things like this! Read on if you would like to know more…..
This past week, the Comite Champagne set the yield (the total amount of grapes that can be harvested this vintage) at 13,1 kg per hectare. That is one of the highest levels this century, and enough to create more than 380 million bottles of champagne.
Compare that to 2020, when the yield was 8,ooo kg per hectare, or enough for 220 million bottles. Big change.
Included in this 13,100 is about 1/4 of this year’s crop, 3,100 kg per hectare, that can be put into reserves. Reserves are extremely important. Since most of what you drink is Non Vintage (NV), it is actually a blend of this year’s harvest as well as many different wines made from past tears. Some houses have a library of reserve wine that goes back 30 plus years! All the old” wine in reserve serves to keep constant the house style, so that from year to year your favorite bubbly does not taster different. It also serves to add character and depth to a blend.
There’s another reason for reserves, and that became incredibly evident this year, 2021. Champagne is a cool climate wine region prone to frosts, heavy rain and storms like this year, and crazy drought like last summer. Unlike other wine regions, your harvest is not consistent from year to year, and nothing close to guaranteed. As stated earlier, some winegrowers lost a lot of their crops because of weather in 2021, so that this year they estimate a 60% drop in the harvest. There has not been this low a harvest since 1981.
While the yield is set very high, what about those growers who had a large loss to their crops? If winegrowers harvest less than the available yield, they can benefit from an exit from the reserve, up to the quantities missing, to reach 10,000 kg per hectare. While it does not make yp for what the frosts, rain and hailstorms did this year, it will compensate somewhat.
Even though consumption was down significantly during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, 2021 has seen a large increase in demand, especially in the UK and USA. Since production was down in 2020 (245 million bottles compared to 297m in 2019), supply and demand are out of balance .
The bottom line: there is likely to be a champagne shortage at the end of the year, so buy your bubbly now!
