Tasting
Champagne Lanson's Hervé Dantan Turns Attention to the 2025 Vintage
Hervé Dantan of Champagne Lanson has offered an early assessment of the 2025 growing season, identifying August as a pivotal month in determining harvest quality.
What happened
On 17 September 2025, Hervé Dantan of Champagne Lanson shared his assessment of the 2025 growing season, drawing particular attention to August as a month of considerable significance for the year's development in the vineyards of Champagne.
Dantan's remarks represent one of the earlier formal reflections from an established Champagne house on what the 2025 harvest may ultimately yield. With the picking period either under way or freshly concluded at the time of publication, his comments carry the weight of a season's close observation.
Why it matters
Vintage commentary from houses of Lanson's standing serves a purpose well beyond the promotional. When a senior figure speaks to the character of a growing season, the trade and the wider world of Champagne take note. Such assessments provide the first considered signals of what growers, blenders, and eventually consumers might expect from a given year.
August, in particular, occupies a critical position in the Champagne calendar. The conditions that prevail during that month — temperature, rainfall, and the balance between the two — bear directly on the final ripeness of the fruit and the equilibrium between sugar and acidity that defines the region's wines. A favourable August can rescue a difficult summer; a troubled one can complicate even the most promising of springs.
Dantan's identification of August as a defining chapter in 2025 therefore offers a meaningful, if early, orientation for those following the season.
Context
Champagne Lanson is among the established houses of the Champagne region in France. Hervé Dantan's association with the house places him in a position to observe and interpret the growing season with the perspective that comes from sustained engagement with the region's viticulture.
Vintage assessments of this kind are typically issued in the weeks surrounding harvest, when the evidence of the season is freshest and the first fruit has begun to arrive at the press houses. The 2025 growing season will be subject to further analysis as winemaking progresses and the character of the wines becomes clearer through the months ahead.