Sommelier Ranks CHAMPAGNE from Worst to Best

Hi, my name is Gary, I'm a WSET3 qualified sommelier, and today I'm raking champagne from the worst mass-market bottle to absolute treasures. Let's go for it. At the very bottom, I'd put supermarket private label champagne. This is the bottle that exists mostly because people want to say they bought some champagne without paying real champagne money. You know this style, probably. It's some goldish label, French-looking name nobody recognizes, actually. Maybe 20 to 30 euros on the shelf, sometimes even less during promotions. Is it always terrible? Nope, it's not. Sometimes it is perfectly drinkable if it's extremely cold and you are not asking too many questions. But as a category, this is where the word champagne does more work than the wine itself. The fruit is often thin, the acidity can be very sharp, the bubbles can be quite aggressive, and the dosage sometimes feels like it's there to cover the fact that the base wine doesn't have much personality. If you see MA on the label, that usually means Mach Auxiliaire. Basically, a buyer's own brand. And while that doesn't automatically mean bad, it does tell you that you're probably buying a label concept more than a producer identity. For me, it's a D-tier champagne. Just above that, I'd put the cheapest, anonymous, non-vintage-brewed champagnes. Non-vintage-brewed is the classic style of champagne. It's a blend, normally of several years, designed to be fresh, quite consistent, balanced and ready to drink. In theory, that's a beautiful idea, because blending is one of the champagne's greatest skills, but at the cheaper end, it often becomes very simple. It has some green apple, lemon, bubbles and a little bit of sweetness, probably. Maybe a hint of toast, but then it disappears. It is not offensive, but it doesn't really teach you why champagne matters. This is the kind of bottle people bring to party because they don't want to arrive empty-handed, not because they're excited to drink particularly this bottle. I'd put this in a C-tier. It is perfectly acceptable, but quite uninteresting. This is exactly why on my private wine tours in Champagne and Bordeaux, I don't take people to D-tier mass-market producers, where the experience feels like a factory visit. We go to small, family-owned estates, real growers with private transport, proper dining and wineries chosen because they actually have something interesting to show. It's a nice experience, I believe. If you're ever going to Champagne or Bordeaux or any other wine region and fancy a wine tour, you're more than welcome. All the info is in the description. And now we start getting into the real middle of Champagne, like big houses, non-vintage brews. This is the world of Moet Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Tatinger, Bollanger, Paul Roger, Lorraine Perrier and the other famous names most people actually recognize. And wine people sometimes love to hate on these bottles because they are everywhere in every supermarket around the world. But honestly, making millions of bottles that taste very consistent year after year is incredibly difficult. The big houses have access to huge networks of growers, reserve wines, seller expertise and decades of blending knowledge. This issue is that you're also paying for branding, for distribution, for marketing, for some prestige as well. Sometimes the wine is genuinely quite good. Sometimes it's simply reliable, maybe a bit overpriced, but reliability has some value as well. French say that Moet is a Champagne without a soul, but I don't think so, actually. I think Moet is perfectly fine. At least it's a well-made wine. If someone opens a decent bottle of Veuve Clicquot, Moet Chandon at a dinner, nobody should complain, I think. For me, it is a solid B tier. In the same general value zone, but often more interesting, you have Cooperative Champagne. These are wines made by groups of growers who pull grapes and resources, and on the label you might see CM, Cooperative de Manipulation in French. Some Cooperative Champagne is quite basic, but some of it is genuinely underrated because Cooperatives, they can blend fruit from different villages and offer good quality without the luxury house markup. A good Cooperative bottle is often a better buy than a weak big brand bottle at the same price. I'd put Cooperative Champagne in B tier with the best examples pushing towards higher tiers, A probably. And now about the regions and styles of Champagne. For instance, Cote d'Ivoire used to be treated by some people like the less prestigious cousin of Champagne, but right now it is one of the most exciting places for value and personality. The wines are often Pinot Noir driven, they are fruitier, rounder, sometimes with a slightly Burgundian feeling, you know? They may not always have the sharp, chalky tension of the Cote de Blanc, but they often have charm, generosity and individuality. For normal people who actually want to drink Champagne rather than just analyze it, this actually matters. As a category, I'd put Cote d'Ivoire in B tier, but the best growers are easily A tier. Then, the Vallée de la Marne and Meunier-based Champagnes are also massively underrated, I think. For years, Meunier was treated like the useful but less serious grape, you know? Pinot Noir gave the wine the structure, Chardonnay gave its elegance and Meunier gave probably some fruit. But that's an outdated view, I think. Good Meunier can be just beautiful, can be round, juicy, floral, sometimes some red apple, pear, plum, pastry, sometimes soft spicy edge. These Champagnes are often more approachable and more immediately delicious than the severe, chalky styles people call serious Champagne. Are they always the longest-lived wines in Champagne? Not necessarily, but they can be some of the most enjoyable. I'd put strong Meunier and Vallée de la Marne Champagne at B plus or even A tier, depending on the producer as well. And now we move into the classic grape-based styles. We have Blanc de Noir and Blanc de Blanc. Blanc de Noir means white Champagne made from great grapes like Pinot Noir and Meunier. These wines tend to have more body, more power, more retro character, more shoulder. You have villages like Bouzy, Ambonnet, Verzenet. Pinot Noir can make Champagnes that are very deep, venous, structured, good for food. Meunier-based Blanc de Noir can be more generous, more open, but in the hands of a great producer it can also be very complex. This is A tier for me, no doubt. Blanc de Blanc is almost the opposite energy, usually made from Chardonnay, especially from the Cote de Blanc. It can be the purest, most elegant expression of Champagne. It has lemon, green apple, white flowers, a lot of chalk, oysters, salt, everything. Villages like Avis, Cramant, Auger are legendary for this style. And cheap Blanc de Blanc can be quite thin and sharp, but great Blanc de Blanc is one of the most beautiful wines in the world. Young it can be too sharp and with age it becomes deeper, toastier, creamier and more complex, while keeping this mineral chalky line. As a category, again, A tier and the top level, S tier, no problem. Then we have Premier Cru and Grand Cru Champagne, but this is where people often misunderstand the label, because the French classification might be kind of tricky. In Burgundy, Grand Cru usually means a specific vineyard. In Champagne, Grand Cru and Premier Cru refers to villages, not individual vineyards. There are 17 Grand Cru villages and 44 Premier Cru villages. A mediocre producer from a Grand Cru can still make quite uninteresting Champagne, and a brilliant grower from a lesser known classification, from a less famous village, can make something far more exciting. So Premier Cru or Grand Cru is a clue, but in Champagne it's not a guarantee. From strong producers these wines are A tier, but the producer matters actually more than the words on the label. And then we have Vintage Champagne. It's where Champagne really starts behaving like fine wine rather than just sparkling wine. A Vintage Champagne comes from one declared year, instead of being blended across multiple years. It also has to age longer before release, and serious producers often age it much longer than the legal minimum. This is where you begin to taste not only the house style, but the year itself. Ripe year or cold year or tense year. So good Vintage Champagne has more depth, more structure, more texture, often more this brioche, toast, nuts and cream, but still with acidity cutting through everything. It isn't automatically better than non-Vintage, but when it is good, it is much more distinctive. Vintage Champagne is A tier, great Vintage Champagne from a great producer S tier, no doubt. Grover Champagne probably is the most exciting category for wine nerds and also it's good value for the money. Look for RM on the label, Récoltant Manipulant in French. That means the producer grows the grapes and makes Champagne under their own name. Now, Grover Champagne is not automatically better. Some growers are rustic, some can be inconsistent, some make wines that are more like interesting than actually delicious, but the best growers change the way people think about Champagne. Instead of drinking a brand like Veuve Clicquot, you're drinking a place, a particular village, a particular vineyard, a grape, a person's style. As a category, Grover Champagne is A tier and the best growers S tier easily. Then we reach prestige cuvées. We have here Dom Pérignon, we have Cristal, we have La Grande Dame, we have Sir Winston Churchill, Belle Époque and other crown jewels of the big houses. Some of these wines are very expensive because of marketing, no doubt, but the best prestige cuvées are genuinely great wines. They usually come from top villages, top parcels, stricter selection, they have longer aging and a very refined house style. The difference between a normal non-vintage brute and a great prestige cuvée is not just more luxury or more pricier wine. It is texture, it is depth, it's balance, and the ability to evolve in a glass and in the cellar, in the bottle as well. Many people buy these bottles to show their status, but the best examples really deserve the reputation and the money paid for it. S tier. And finally, at the very, very top of everything, we have the rare single vineyard, old wine, late disgorged cult champagnes. This is the treasure chest, actually. You have Clos d'Egoise here, Clos de Meusnil, Clos d'Ambonnet, Salon and wines like that, champagnes like that. At this level, champagnes stop being the thing you open for a wedding or for a special occasion, and it becomes one of the greatest fine wines in the world. Here the conversation is about the particular parcel, the percentage of chalk in the soil, the oxidation, the dosage, disgorgement date, bottle age, if it were old wines or lesser old wines, about the texture and generally how wine changes over several hours in the glass. The prices can be insane and some bottles are almost impossible to find on the market, but when they hit, they hit like great burgundy and bubbles. S tier, no doubt. And if you are planning your trip to Champagne, to Bordeaux or any other wine region, to Spain for instance, you can message me and we'll plan it together with private transport, best wineries visited, dining booking, basically everything you'll need on a wine trip, but with a personalized approach made by me personally. So, I'll see you in the next one! Cheers!