🍷 Reserve wine
Wine from past years kept to blend into new sparkling wine.
Reserve wine is wine from past harvests that a winery keeps to blend into new cuvées. It is talked about most in Champagne. There the weather varies a lot from year to year, yet buyers expect their favourite non-vintage champagne to taste the same every year.
The answer is assemblage, or blending. Young wine from the new harvest is blended with reserve wines from several years. A cold, sharp year is softened with wine from a warm year, and a light year gains depth from older wines. This is how each house keeps its recognisable style.
Reserve wines are kept in steel tanks, barrels or large bottles. Some houses run a perpetual reserve: each year part of the wine is drawn off and topped up with new wine, as in a solera. The larger and older the stock, the more complex the taste. Reserve wine exists elsewhere too, but it became a symbol of French wine.
How it connects to Wine
🍷 Reserve wine → → → 🗺️ French wine → kind of → 🗺️ Wines of Europe → kind of → 🍷 Wine
Links
- Part of
- 🍷 Assemblage
- Related to
- 🗺️ French wine
- Similar and different
- 🍷 Non-vintage Champagne, 🍷 Assemblage
Frequently asked questions
Why do champagne houses need reserve wine?
To keep non-vintage champagne consistent in style every year, whatever the weather.
Where are reserve wines stored?
In steel tanks, oak barrels or large bottles, sometimes for many years.
Does vintage champagne contain reserve wine?
Usually not: vintage champagne is made mainly from the wine of one year, so reserve wines play a much smaller role in it.
Similar
🍷 Assemblage · 🍷 Pupitre · 🍷 Liqueur d'expédition · 🍷 Cryoextraction · 🍷 Tirage · 🍷 Gyropalette