Glossary
Non-Vintage (NV)
A champagne blended from wines of multiple years, designed to express a consistent house style rather than a single harvest. Typically 80%+ of a house's production.
Non-vintage (NV) champagne — sometimes now labelled multi-vintage or MV by producers who want to signal the breadth of the blend — is made by combining a base wine from the current harvest with a share of reserve wines from earlier years.
The goal is consistency: a Moët Impérial or a Bollinger Special Cuvée should taste recognisably itself every year, regardless of harvest quality. For most houses, NV accounts for 80% or more of production.
AOC rules require a minimum of 15 months of bottle ageing for NV (vs. 3 years for vintage). Many houses exceed this comfortably — Pol Roger’s Brut Réserve is typically aged four years or more on the lees.
Related terms