It’s the drink of parties and celebrations, of weddings and christenings, the drink that conjures up memories of special occasions and a touch of luxury. Champagne is no everyday drink so, when buying a bottle, it’s worth buying the best – so we’ve rounded up the best champagnes to buy so you can find the ultimate bottles to pop.
There’s plenty of choice when it comes to fizz these days: from affordable prosecco and cava to unique English sparkling wines and even non-alcoholic sparkling options, but champagne remains the most decadent option. The strict rules limiting the region of the same name where it can be made in northern France, along with production rules, explain why its price tag is often higher as well as why it retains such a distinct character.
Some champagne houses may be familiar names, such as Taittinger or Veuve Clicquot, but we’ve tested a range of lesser known, budget-friendly and even best supermarket champagnes, too, to find a brilliant affordable bottle of bubbly. Our selection varies from £14.99 to £50, for fizz to suit any budget.
All champagnes have been tested by wine writers Henry Jeffreys and Jonathan Hatchman. Henry is a drinks and wine writer who writes for Master of Malt and his work has appeared in the The Guardian, The Spectator and The Financial Times.
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Best champagnes at a glance
- Best grower champagne: Château de Bligny Grande Réserve, £34.99
- Best value champagne: Champagne Louis Dumont NV, £19.99
- Best Blanc de Blancs champagne: Laithwaite Brut Premier Cru Blanc de Blancs, £32
- Best richly flavoured champagne: Champagne Gaston Declos 25th Anniversary Blanc de Noirs Brut NV, £39.99
- Best fresh tasting champagne: Champagne Bruno Paillard Première Cuvée Extra Brut, £44
- Best all-rounder champagne: Tesco Finest Premier Cru Brut NV, £26
- Best of the big-name champagnes: Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Brut NV, £50
- Best budget champagne: Veuve Monsigny Champagne NV, £14.99
- Best blanc de noirs: Waitrose Blanc de Noirs Brut, £28
- Best rose champagne: Taittinger Brut Prestige Rose NV, £49
- Best unusual champagne: Barnaut Blanc de Noirs Grand Cru NV, £44.95
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Château de Bligny Grande Réserve
Best grower champagne
Star rating: 4.5/5
ABV: 12%
Fun fact: Château de Bligny is the only house in champagne to benefit from the title of château. All of the estate’s winemaking stages are conducted on-site, from growing to fermenting and ageing. Dating back to the 18th century, it was taken over in 1999 and renovated.
Comprising an equal blend of chardonnay and pinot noir, the Château de Bligny Grande Réserve is bottle-fermented and lees-aged, which gives the wine a remarkably toasty richness, joined by bold floral aromas, ripe pear, strawberry, peach and nectarine notes and just a touch of brioche. With dense structure, fine bubbles and lingering finish, it’s a complex and astonishingly well-balanced champagne.
Available from:
Laithwaites (£34.99)
Champagne Louis Dumont NV
Best value champagne
Star rating: 4/5
ABV: 12%
Sub £20 bottles of champagne are rarely as good as this one. Featuring a blend of meunier and chardonnay from the region’s Vallée de la Marne and full-flavoured pinot noir from Côtes des Bars, this pinot-dominant champagne is expectedly rife with berry notes, brioche and citrus notes of lemon and lime, joined by some crisp apple savours and a whisper of biscuit on the long, elegant finish. The palate is fairly simple and certainly less complex than other options on the list, but given the cost, Champagne Louis Dumont boasts extraordinary value.
Available from:
Laithwaites (£19.99)
Laithwaite Brut Premier Cru Blanc de Blancs
Best Blanc de Blancs champagne
Star rating: 4/5
ABV: 12.5%
Produced exclusively for Laithwaites, from a prominent cellar in the village of Vertus, this Blanc de Blancs champagne is crafted using grapes sourced entirely from premier cru vineyards, undergoing a 30-month maturation (which is double the required minimum).
With expected finesse and less weight than traditional champagne, this has plenty of butter and toasted brioche notes alongside crisp green apple, lemon and a delightful biscuit character on the complex, elegant finish.
Available from:
Laithwaites (£32)
Champagne Gaston Declos 25th Anniversary Blanc de Noirs Brut NV
Best richly flavoured champagne
Star rating: 4/5
ABV: 12%
Virgin Wines has partnered with Gyéjacquot Frères for the past 15 years, so to celebrate the wine merchants’ 25th anniversary, a collaborative cuvée has been launched. Founded in 1970 by brothers Daniel and Michel Gyéjacquot, the House of Gyéjacquot Frères is still family owned, with an estate of 19 hectares of vineyards spread across eight villages in the Côte des Bar.
Exclusively produced from pinot noir, the house’s star grape, the Champagne Gaston Declos 25th Anniversary Blanc de Noirs Brut NV is aged for 22 months on its lees, expressive and rampant with apple, lemon, brioche and hazelnut notes, with pronounced freshness and delicacy. With layered richness, the champagne is great as a standalone, but also pairs incredibly well with food.
Available from:
Virgin Wines (£39.99)
Best fresh tasting champagne
Star rating: 4.5/5
ABV: 12%
Established in 1981, Bruno Paillard is an independent, family-owned champagne house with an aim of showcasing the northern and chalky character of champagne. An interpretation of the entire Champagne region, their flagship Bruno Paillard Première Cuvée features a blend of pinot noir, chardonnay and meunier from more than 30 crus from the most noble terroirs, with 20 per cent fermented in-barrel and aged for three years on lees.
What’s also notable about this particular champagne is the extraordinarily low dosage, at fewer than five grams per litre, which provides outstanding finesse and purity. Ripe grapefruit, lime, redcurrant, cherry are all clear on the nose and on the palate, complete with bright acidity and a long, clean finish with a whisper of almond.
Available from:
Hedonism Wines (£44)
Wanderlust Wines (£48)
Tesco Finest Premier Cru Brut NV
Best all-rounder champagne
Size: 75cl
ABV: 12.5%
Star rating: 4/5
This probably the best value champagne on the market and it’s one I buy regularly. With its notes of bruised apple, flakey pastry, toasted brioche and hazelnuts, it massively over-delivers for the money. Also, unlike many other supermarket champagnes, it’s consistently excellent so you can buy repeatedly with confidence.
Available from:
Tesco (£26)
Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Brut NV
Best of the big-name champagnes
Size: 75cl
ABV: 12.5%
Star rating: 4/5
That orange label is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to overlook Veuve Clicquot. This would be a mistake because in the past few years it has become one of the best Grand Marque non vintages around. I loved its lemon sherbert vibrancy, creamy texture and long brioche finish. Absolutely superb and well worth the money, especially if you buy six bottles.
Available from:
Waitrose (£50)
Tesco (£50)
Amazon (£48)
Veuve Monsigny Champagne Brut
Best budget champagne
Size: 75cl
ABV: 12.5%
Star rating: 3.5/5
This is a crazy affordable price for champagne. It’s a name that attracts headlines all over the press for its supposed ability to rival the well-known champagne giants and while I don’t think it’s as good as all the hype would have you believe, it is much better than you would expect a £14.99 champagne to be. It is simple, clean and well balanced. Just the thing if you’re having a party.
Available from:
Aldi (£14.99)
Waitrose Blanc de Noirs Brut
Best blanc de noirs
Size: 75cl
ABV: 12.5%
Star rating: 4/5
Another supermarket stalwart, this is made by Alexander Bonnet for Waitrose. The term ‘blanc de noirs’ means that it is made from black grapes only (pinot noir and meunier) and the result is rich and bold. If you like a fuller style of champagne, then you’ll like this. Lots of complexity for around the £20 mark and often less when you buy six bottles or more.
Available from:
Waitrose (£27.99)
Taittinger Brut Prestige Rose NV
Best rose champagne
Size: 75cl
ABV: 12.5%
Star rating: 5/5
Champagne roses are usually made with a small addition of red wine (made from pinot noir) being added to the blend. Sometimes this is such a little amount that you can barely taste it. Not so with this rose champagne which is positively packed with dark cherry fruit. I loved its intense savoury finish. This would work well served alongside duck or other rich dishes.
Available from:
Sainsbury’s (£49)
Waitrose Cellar (£49)
Barnaut Blanc de Noirs Grand Cru NV
Best unusual champagne
Size: 75cl
ABV: 12.5%
Up next, we have a bottle from a small grower based in Bouzy, which was, and to some extent still is, known as red wine country. Blanc de noirs means it’s only made from dark grapes which you can taste in the vivid, orangey fruit moving into marmalade flavours that have a real smokiness on the finish. Tangy and delicious.
Available from:
Lea & Sandeman (£44.95)
Why is champagne so expensive?
Champagne is a costly wine to produce. The raw materials (that is, the grapes) are the most expensive in France. Most champagne houses don’t own nearly enough vineyards to provide for their needs so they have to buy in grapes from small growers. This demand pushes up the price.
The region Champagne has a climate very similar to southern England so these precious grapes don’t get terribly ripe. The resulting wines – low in alcohol and high in acidity – are not yet delicious but perfect for turning into sparkling wine.
The process where base metals are turned into sparkling gold involves blending the still wines, usually from different vintages and vineyards all over the region, into a house style. The resulting blend is then bottled with a mixture of wine, yeast and sugar, sealed, and left to ferment a second time. The result is those magic bubbles of carbon dioxide.
But this secondary fermentation also produces flavours of toast, nuts and yeast – the flavours we most associate with champagne. It’s left in this state for a minimum of 15 months (some are kept for decades like this). The yeast is then removed, the wine corked, and it is ready to sell, though the best wines are kept longer. All of this takes time and money.
What makes a bad champagne?
Disappointing champagnes – and there are many, sadly – will have been made from inferior grapes, matured for the minimum period and will result in a green acidity that has been merely masked with sugar. Wines like these are the reason many people think champagne is over-hyped. Those lovely toasty, bready notes take time to arrive and time is money. No wonder most of us just reach for one of the big names (though these can be a disappointment too).
How we tested champagne
We thought it would be interesting to try the best of the no-name champagnes. We sampled a range, from supermarket own-labels made by giant cooperatives to hand-crafted champagnes made by small growers who use only their own grapes, unusual in Champagne. The wines tried ranged from £10.99 to £50 though the majority were in the £20-30 sweet spot.
Each champagne was tasted blind. Not surprisingly the more expensive bottles, on the whole, tasted better. The conclusion? Around £18 seems to be the minimum you should spend. Anything cheaper, you’d be much better going for something sparkling from Australia, New Zealand or Spain. This article is updated regularly to find the best champagnes to buy each year.
How to open champagne
When opening a bottle of fizz, remember it will behave far better and more predictably if it has been left to sit and chill for a few hours. Warmth and/or rough handling both make for an explosive cork situation and the likelihood of more mess and waste. Champagne should go into glasses, not onto ceilings.
- Make sure you have your glasses ready and within easy reach. Then, take your bottle and remove the foil; there should be a tag or perforation line to make this easy and neat.
- Once this is done, grip the neck of the bottle in one hand with your thumb over the top of the caged cork.
- From here on in, keep the bottle pointed away from yourself and anyone present, especially people’s faces – about a 45 degree angle is good.
- With your other hand, untwirl the cage fastening. Uncover your thumb, lift off the cage and replace your thumb over the cork.
- If you can feel the cork pushing to leave the bottle already, get a glass ready. Otherwise, with the bottle gripped in one hand, slowly pull up the cork with the other. It may be quite stiff at first – if so, alternate pulling and twisting motions – but as you go you’ll start to feel the pressure from within helping you out.
- Ease it up, always with your hand over the cork in a firm grip and, as you hear a pop, you know you’ve opened it.
As to pouring champagne, if everything went smoothly, you have a bottle at 45 degrees, with a touch of vapour wafting out. Let that excess gas escape for a few seconds, then in smooth, gentle motions, pour a small amount – just a splash – into each glass in turn.
Now return to the first glass and, tilting it also at around 45 degrees, top up slowly, until no more than two-thirds full.
If the champagne is very lively and the mousse is rising to the top of the glass despite a slow pour, just move onto the next one and come back to it. That mousse is the fizz escaping, and in excess, leaves you with a flat drink, and nobody wants that.
Don’t over-fill the glass, as it will warm up far faster there than in the bottle, and warm champagne is a shame. If you have a bottle where the cork is straining to be free as soon as the cage is removed, then you will have to move fast.
Once the cork is out, it will be followed by froth, which should go straight into that readied glass. Keep pouring off the excess into your glasses one by one until it subsides, then top up as before.
Champagne cocktail recipes
We’ve gathered the best champagne cocktail recipes for when you want to do more with your bottle. Classic champagne cocktails include buck’s fizz for a special brunch, or a fruity kir royale made with crème de cassis. For something a little more unique, try a champagne mojito or refreshing sgroppino (mixing champagne with vodka and lemon sorbet). Fans of an aperol spritz can put champagne to good use in a sparkling aperitivo spritz during summer. In the festive season, a spice 75 is a perfect Christmas party drink.
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