2000 Champagne

The magic Millennium! A great Bordeaux wine vintage………..has Champagne fared as well, or will the vintage sell in any event as it is from the (overused word alert) iconic 2000?

Mother Nature is careless of the systems man has evolved to keep track of time, irritated at the hubris of it all perhaps. In any event, after a very dry Spring, the key problem in 2000 was the hail (in June and mainly July), which affected, to varying degrees, nearly half of the entire vineyard, and completely destroyed about a tenth of it.

Thereafter everything was fine, and a warm August helped to redress the qualitative balance, and there was sunshine throughout the harvest, most of which was brought in under clear skies, finishing by the 18th September.

Relatively soft and approachable wines, marked by low acidity in the mould of 1999, but perhaps with a little more body and length. The big guns, not surprisingly, pulled out the stops in this big year, ( if a gun can pull out stops) and both Dom Pérignon and Cristal were (and are) excellent.

Simon Field MW, BBR Champagne Buyer