The Best Champagne Brands

Reims · Founded 1843 · Grande Cuvée from ~€190

The most singular house in Champagne. Every wine, including the non-vintage Grande Cuvée, is blended from more than a hundred wines across a decade of reserves and fermented in small oak casks. The result is a champagne with the weight and texture of a fine white Burgundy. Start with Grande Cuvée; Clos du Mesnil and Clos d'Ambonnay are the collector bottles.

Hautvillers · Vintage only · From ~€200

Moët's prestige cuvée is made only in declared vintages and released in successive Plénitudes as it matures. The style is precise and mineral rather than rich, built to be drunk with food. P2, released after roughly sixteen years, is the bottle that convinces sceptics that champagne ages.

Reims · Founded 1776 · Cristal from ~€250

Created in 1876 for Tsar Alexander II, Cristal is still made from the same parcels farmed biodynamically by Roederer. It is the most polished champagne in the category: chalky, tightly wound and very long. Roederer's Collection non-vintage is the best-value introduction to the house.

Le Mesnil-sur-Oger · Founded 1905 · From ~€700

One wine, one village, one grape, and only in exceptional years — fewer than forty vintages in a century. Salon is blanc de blancs at its most uncompromising: austere on release and extraordinary after twenty years. The sister house Delamotte offers the same terroir at a fraction of the price.

Aÿ · Founded 1829 · Special Cuvée from ~€60

The Pinot Noir house, fermented in old oak and aged on lees far beyond the legal minimum. Special Cuvée is the best everyday champagne in this list, and R.D. — recently disgorged after a decade or more — is one of the great food champagnes. James Bond's bottle, with substance behind the association.

Épernay · Founded 1849 · Winston Churchill from ~€230

The most quietly confident house in Champagne, still family owned and famously hand-riddled. Brut Réserve is impeccably consistent; the Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, made only in strong vintages from Pinot-dominant grand cru fruit, is powerful without heaviness.

Reims · Founded 1734 · Comtes de Champagne from ~€180

Chardonnay-led and floral, the most immediately charming of the grandes marques. Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs, from grand cru Côte des Blancs fruit, is one of the benchmark blanc de blancs and ages beautifully for fifteen to twenty years.

Reims · Founded 1729 · Dom Ruinart from ~€220

The oldest established champagne house, and the most Chardonnay-focused of the large maisons. Blanc de Blancs is the house signature — light, citrus-driven and built for an aperitif — while Dom Ruinart shows what the same grape does with a decade in Ruinart's Roman chalk cellars.