Twenty Years On: The 1996 Vintage, Champagne
I enjoy looking back at vintages past through the lens of my own cellar, a cellar which sometimes allows for comprehensive tastings (in vintages where I was obviously in a trigger-happy, buying mood) and sometimes only for small, blinkered snapshots (presumably years when I was in a more parsimonious frame of mind). As the end of 2016 drew near I published some thoughts on the wines of 2006, based on a very small selection of wines aged ten years, and on some wines from 2001, a rather more extensive array of wines aged fifteen years from various corners of Germany, Spain, Italy, the Loire Valley and other European wine regions.
I won’t be looking back to the 1991 vintage at 25 years of age as I did with the 1990 and 1989 vintages. The reason for this is simple and perhaps rather obvious; my cellar isn’t exactly brimming with wines from the most recent of these three vintages, whereas I could rustle up at least a handful of bottles of Quarts de Chaume, Vouvray and Sauternes in the 1989 and 1990 vintages. So this leaves us with the 1996 vintage, at 20 years of age. Normally I would publish these notes before the end of the year, to draw a line under it (and who doesn’t want to see the back of 2016?) but various demons conspired to prevent me doing so. So here we are, looking back to 1996 from early 2017. I have divided my little string of tasting notes up into three, starting with Champagne, then the Loire Valley, then everywhere else.
Twenty Years On: 1996 Champagne
During the mid-1990s the focus in Champagne (and various other European wine regions, it has to be said) was still on the 1988, 1989 and 1990 vintages. And although 1995 gave us some wines of promise, 1996 was soon lauded as the most successful vintage since the universally declared 1990. The growing season featured a long dry summer which provided excellent ripening conditions, yet it did not seem to diminish the acidity levels. As a result the wines were both ripe and fresh, and they were nicely set up for the cellar.
