Charles de Cazanove

Charles de Cazanove is a Reims house that most people meet through its Brut NV, and that is where the misunderstanding starts. An inexpensive Champagne is not a lesser kind of sparkling wine. The appellation rules, the grapes and the second fermentation in bottle are identical to those used by the famous names. What changes is how much reserve wine goes into the blend and how long the bottles sit on their lees before disgorging.

The range reflects exactly that. Brut NV and Rose NV are the everyday wines, made for volume and early drinking. The Organic bottling and Blanc de Noirs sit a step up, narrower in style and made in smaller runs. Then come the vintage wines: Tradition Millesime, and the Stradivarius bottlings, which spend considerably longer ageing before release and taste noticeably more of toast and dried fruit than of fresh apple.

Extra money here buys time in the cellar, not a different grape or a different method. Once you reach the vintage tier, further spending mostly buys presentation and scarcity, so buy the ageing and stop when the box starts costing more than the wine.

The list below is sorted by price, lowest first.