Ascertaining information about a specific bottle of non-vintage champagne can often be quite difficult. Although today many more producers elect to share information on back labels or through easily (and sometimes not so easily) decipherable ID numbers and QR codes, receiving no such information is still by far the norm. Jancis addressed this changing culture of ‘mystery wine’ in a recent article published on her website.
“A consumer had no way of telling from looking at a bottle how old the wine was or which of the many extremely irregular champagne harvests the blend was based on. The argument was that NV champagne fed efficiently through the distribution system so you were always presented with the most recent cuvée. That might be true of supermarkets with their necessarily efficient stock turnover, but is less so for small, independent wine merchants, and is absolutely untrue of what restaurants and bars offer.”
Read the full article on JancisRobinson.com here.
Read the full article on JancisRobinson.com here
