Often associated with occasions of celebration, there’s nothing quite like popping that champagne cork and filling up your champagne flute with sparkling wine!
Key takeaways
- The best way to store champagne is in a cool place with consistent temperature
- Unopened champagne has a shelf life of 5 years and vintage champagne of 10 to 20 years if stored properly
- An easy way to detect if your champagne has reached the end of its shelf life is to look at the cork once the bottle was opened.
- Champagne which was stored for a longer time tends to have a smaller bottom part of the cork therefore releasing some of the carbon dioxide
Champagne the queen among sparkling wines
It is a luxurious sparkling wine that is used to toast a special occasion.
But if you’ve saved up for a particularly nice vintage, perhaps you don’t want to drink it just yet. Some sparkling wines are often left in wine collections for years in a cool place, so surely champagne can be treated the same, right?
Do champagne sparkling wines get better with age? Or are you better off cracking open that champagne bottle and enjoying it while it’s still fresh? Not all bottles of champagne are age worthy.
So why not put your champagne on ice in the meantime before we find out whether you can age champagne gets better with age!
The bottle of champagne will start to lose its precious bubbles, and sparkling wine will taste really sour and unappealing if you were to pour yourself a glass.
It’s always best to enjoy your champagne as many other sparkling wine bottles as quickly as you can so that the bottle doesn’t lose its magic! The normal shelf life is up to 5 years.
There’s nothing worse than having spent years and years looking forward to that tasty bottle of champagne only to find it’s soured and corked during that time.
How long can vintage champagne age?
Storing vintage champagne is a delicate balance between maintaining its exquisite flavors and allowing it to evolve with time. While many believe that unopened champagne can age indefinitely, the reality is that most vintage champagnes reach their peak after 10-20 years of aging. Beyond this point, the flavors may start to deteriorate, losing their vibrant complexity and finesse.
One key factor in determining how long you can store vintage champagne is the quality of the wine itself. High-quality vintage champagnes from top producers such as Dom Perignon or Krug can often continue to improve for several decades in optimal storage conditions. However, wines from lesser-known producers or weaker vintages may not have the same aging potential.
How Long Can You Keep An Unopened Bottle Of Champagne?
Knowing how long you can keep an unopened bottle of champagne will depend on several factors.
The most important of these is whether you have been saving a bottle of vintage champagne or a bottle of non-vintage champagne.
A vintage bottle of champagne will last you the longer portion of between 5 to 10 years. A vintage bottle of champagne makes use of grapes that have all been harvested from the same vintage.
Non vintage champagnes vs vintage champagnes
Grapes harvested in a single year can often make the bottle more expensive, and you can tell whether it is vintage by the fact a date is clearly displayed on the bottle.
Non-vintage or nv champagnes make use of grapes and their wines from several different vintages. As a result, it doesn’t tend to last as long, and is generally a cheaper bottle because of this.
A non-vintage bottle of champagne will only last you for between 3 – 4 years. It will also be important to store your bottle of champagne correctly.
You will need to avoid storing champagne it in direct sunlight, and try to keep it in an area where there is a constant temperature, such as a cellar or wine fridge.
Is Champagne Still Good After 10 Years?
If you have an unopened bottle of vintage champagne and you have stored it correctly in the past 10 years, then there’s a good chance that it will still be good to drink.
Anything beyond the 10 year mark and you could risk open bottle of your champagne becoming less bubbly and with ripe aroma and darker color.
You will need to have kept your champagne is stored properly and at a constant temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit, ensure that the humidity levels were good, and that there is no exposure to any excessive vibration, noise, or sunlight.
The best way to store your unopened bottle of champagne is to store it in a wine fridge or refrigerator.
You can also store it in a wine cellar if you have one, or store champagne in another area of your home where it is cool and dry.
How Long Can You Keep A Bottle Of Moët And Chandon?
It will all come down to whether you have opted for a bottle of vintage Moët and Chandon or whether you have opted for a non-vintage bottle of Moët and Chandon!
If you have opted for a vintage bottle, then you can keep the Moët and Chandon champagne for between 5 to 10 years.
If you have opted for a non-vintage bottle of Moët and Chandon, then it will last you around 3 to 4 years.
Should Champagne Be Stored On Its Side Or Upright?
The debate between the correct way of storing champagne to store your champagne is lengthy and historical.
However, studies have shown that it doesn’t actually make much of a difference to your bottle of champagne as to whether it is stored upright or whether it is stored on its side.
It is often thought that storing the bottle of champagne on its side helps to keep the cork moist.
However, there is plenty of moisture in that air bubble between the liquid of the champagne and the cork inside the bottle to prevent the cork from drying out.
It has also been argued that if the bottle of champagne were to be stored on its side for long periods of time, this would actually give the cork too much moisture, and cause it to degrade quicker.
In Summary
So there you have it! You now know that champagne doesn’t actually get better with age, and that you are much better off drinking it while it’s lovely, bubbly and fresh.
Depending on whether you have opted for vintage or non-vintage champagne, the bottle will only last you for between 3 to 10 years from when you purchased it.
A bottle of unopened vintage champagne will last you for between 5 to 10 years depending on how it’s stored, and a bottle of unopened non-vintage champagne will last you for around 3 to 4 years.
You will need to ensure that you store them correctly, too, as factors such as temperature and sunlight can expedite the process that will cause the champagne to go bad.