Best Old Vintage Awards: Perrier-Jouët among winners as second edition honours 1995, 1996, and 1998

What happened

The second edition of the Best Old Vintage Awards has announced its three winners, drawn from champagne vintages 1995, 1996, and 1998. Perrier-Jouët was among the houses recognised, continuing a record of distinction that stretches across both editions of the competition. The results were published on 20 October 2026.

Why it matters

The Best Old Vintage Awards occupies a particular place in the world of champagne evaluation: rather than assessing current releases, it turns its attention to aged bottles, rewarding the capacity of a champagne to develop and endure over time. For a house to appear in both editions of such a competition speaks to a consistency that goes beyond a single fortunate harvest. Perrier-Jouët's presence in the winners' circle for the second time underlines that its champagnes have demonstrated sustained quality across decades of cellaring. Notably, two of the three winners from the first edition have repeated their success in the second, suggesting that a core group of producers is proving itself particularly adept at producing champagne built for the long term.

Context

The first edition of the Best Old Vintage Awards examined champagnes from the 1988, 1989, and 1990 vintages — a celebrated trio of years in Champagne. The second edition moved forward in time, focusing on 1995, 1996, and 1998, vintages that have themselves attracted considerable attention from collectors and enthusiasts over the years. The continuity between the two editions — with two producers winning in both — lends the competition an emerging sense of authority, as patterns of excellence begin to emerge across different eras of champagne production. For readers of Brut Daily, the awards serve as a useful reference point when considering which aged champagnes merit attention in the cellar.