Perpetual Reserve Systems

In Champagne, the winemaker can add reserve wines, meaning wines from previous years, to the current year's wine. They provide more developed, more structured and rounder aromas and flavours, and they make the notes conferred by youth more complex, adding freshness and liveliness. On its non-vintage Brut page the Comité Champagne states that "Some vintages contain up to 50% reserve wines." In great non-vintage and multi-vintage Champagnes, reserve wines are added to the base vintage at a rate normally between 20 and 50 percent. Most producers hold large stocks of reserve wine, which can be used when individual harvests are weak or lacking in some element, or when adverse weather reduces yields, and reserve wine has become increasingly important in the blending of non-vintage wines, both for bolstering the volume produced when necessary and for raising quality and consistency. The Champagne production rules (cahier des charges, 2010 text) build this into the appellation. To keep enough wine for blending and for building reserve wines, which the rules call indispensable to the quality of Champagne, the volume of vintage-dated wine an operator presents is at or below 80 percent of the wine of that year the operator bought or produced. The same rules say that reserve wines from earlier harvests, except in vintage wines, bring the riper character of evolved wines to the blend. The Union des Maisons de Champagne, a trade body, describes the cellar master as the keeper of the house style, since every Champagne brand has a very particular signature that must be faithfully replicated from year to year. In its account, reserve wines are held over from previous vintages, filtered and stored in vats or tanks that protect them from air, and in most years a percentage of old reserve wine goes into the final blend, making a young Champagne more mellow and rounding off the personality of the year's wines to produce a taste consistent with the house style. How producers keep their reserves varies. Some houses keep all their reserve wines separated by variety and vintage, some keep them all in oak, and Bollinger even ages some in magnum. Krug ferments the base wines for Grande Cuvée and its vintage wines in oak plot by plot, and many of them go into a vast library of reserves kept in stainless steel. Beginning with the 163rd edition in 2016, each Krug Grande Cuvée has been an interpretation of a year as well as a blending of reserve wines from prior years: the 170th edition, released in 2022, is mostly 2014 (55 percent) and is a blend of 195 wines from 12 different years, with 45 percent 2013 reserve wines, and the 172nd edition, released in 2024, uses reserve wines going back to 1998 that total 42 percent of the blend.

• Reserve wines: wines from previous years added to the current year's wine, bringing more developed, more structured and rounder aromas and flavours
• Share in great non-vintage and multi-vintage Champagnes: normally 20 to 50 percent of the blend
• Champagne rules (2010 text): vintage-dated wine at or below 80 percent of the year's volumes, so that wine remains for blending and for building reserve wines
• Ways to keep reserves: separated by variety and vintage, in oak, in magnum (Bollinger), or as a library of reserves in stainless steel (Krug)

A perpetual reserve, or réserve perpétuelle, is a way of storing reserve wines that is increasingly common in Champagne. Each year a single tank has wine from the new harvest added to it, and wine is then drawn from it for the blends. The result is a reserve that, as it ages, contains diminishing amounts of every single harvest since the system began. The reserve is built over time by adding wine from each harvest to the chosen vessel, which may be a stainless steel or concrete tank of differing sizes, an oak barrel or a large wooden foudre. Typically it is set aside untapped for a number of years to become established and develop, so that by the time it first supplies some or all of the reserve wine in a non-vintage blend, it may contain wines from five or as many as 15 different consecutive harvests. It is then refreshed each year with wine from the new harvest, and some producers also keep back a portion of the new finished non-vintage wine to add further complexity to the reserve. Over time it becomes a blend of diminishing amounts of more and more different harvests. An increasing number of producers, largely smaller ones, have created some form of perpetual reserve. Bruno Paillard, Henri Giraud and Philipponnat have created a different perpetual reserve for each of their multi-vintage blends, adding a percentage from the reserve, around a third but sometimes more, to the new blend made from the latest harvest. Antoine Bouret, who manages Pertois-Lebrun in Cramant with his brother Clément, says the estate began with only 25 hl of reserve wines and bought three oak foudres, which now hold the perpetual reserve it started in 2013.

• One reserve: wine from each new harvest goes in, and wine is drawn out for the blends
• Vessel: stainless steel or concrete tank, oak barrel or large wooden foudre
• At first use: may hold wines from five to as many as 15 consecutive harvests
• Over time: diminishing amounts of more and more different harvests
• Bruno Paillard, Henri Giraud and Philipponnat: a separate perpetual reserve for each multi-vintage blend, supplying around a third, sometimes more, of the new blend

Sherry's traditional ageing system, the Criaderas and Solera System, is a dynamic system in which wines from different stages of ageing are blended together to perpetuate specific characteristics in the wine finally sold. Each solera is made up of tiers, or scales, of butts. The tier with the oldest wine sits at floor level, and the word solera derives from the Spanish word for floor, suelo. The tiers above it hold progressively younger wine and are called criaderas (nurseries), numbered by their closeness in age to the solera tier. The solera produces sherry ready for bottling: periodically a specific proportion of the wine in each of its butts is drawn off, an operation called saca. That space is topped up with wine from the 1st criadera, the space in the 1st criadera with wine from the 2nd, and so on up to the youngest scale, which is topped up with wine from the añada system; this topping up is called rocío. A wine's average ageing in the system is calculated by dividing the total volume of wine in the system by the volume drawn from the solera each year, and under the norms of the Consejo Regulador that proportion must be greater than two. The system maintains the characteristics of the wine in the solera while eliminating the variations between one vintage and another. The solera system is often misleadingly pictured as a pyramid of casks; in reality soleras are much more complex, with as many as 16 separate criaderas, sometimes spread among separate bodegas. This fractional blending nurtures flor in finos and manzanillas and also helps to maintain a consistent house style. Decanter's Giles Fallowfield writes that a Champagne perpetual reserve works in a similar way to a Sherry solera, while Decanter's Tom Hewson writes that it is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a solera.

• Solera: the floor-level tier holding the oldest wine, from which wine is drawn for bottling (saca)
• Criaderas: the tiers above, holding progressively younger wine, numbered by closeness in age to the solera
• Rocío: topping up each tier with wine from the next younger one; the youngest scale is topped up from the añada system
• Sherry rule: total volume in the system divided by the volume drawn each year must be greater than two
• Champagne perpetual reserve: one reserve topped up with each new harvest and drawn from for the blends

Louis Roederer started its perpetual reserve in 2012. It is a large tank holding a blend of older harvests that is topped up each year, and the reserve is aged in a reductive fashion. It made its debut in Collection 242, the multi-vintage blend that replaces Roederer's Brut Premier; the number refers to the youngest vintage in the blend, 2017, the 242nd harvest since the house was founded in 1776. In Collection 242, reserve wines make up 44 percent of the blend: 34 percent from the perpetual reserve, in equal parts from 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, and 10 percent oak-aged reserve wines, with the remaining 56 percent from 2017. Collection 243 uses base wines from 2018, and the Collection series also uses, since 2012, one third perpetual reserve. Collection 244 is created from 2019-vintage base wine plus the perpetual reserve and oak-aged reserve wines. For cellar master Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, the perpetual reserve, rather than the base year, is the foundation of the Collection series, and the multi-vintage approach frees him from chasing one taste: "I no longer have an obligation to reach the same taste every year. I can take the best of every year." At Champagne Pierre Péters in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, the perpetual reserve makes up as much as 50 percent of the entry-level Cuvée de Réserve Blanc de Blancs. The reserve itself is aged in differing containers, part in stainless steel, part in concrete and part in cask, and the estate's Réserve Oubliée is made entirely from it. Accounts of its start differ: Decanter's 2021 producer profile says Rodolphe Péters initiated the concept in 1997, The Drinks Business places the start in the late 1990s, and a Decanter collector's guide updated in 2024 quotes Tom Hewson describing the reserve as going back to 1988. Decanter's Philipp Blom has written that Anselme Selosse keeps the assemblage wines in one tank and replenishes them every year as part of the new vintage, and Richard Juhlin, in a Decanter feature last updated in July 2018, called Selosse's Substance his "solera wine", made of wines from 1986 to the mid-2000s. Reporting on the Collection launch in 2021, The Drinks Business named the growers R Pouillon & Fils and Bérêche & Fils, the houses Jacques Selosse and Henriot, and the cooperative Palmer among producers employing a réserve perpétuelle, and set Roederer's Collection apart because its perpetual reserve is just one part of the blend.

• Louis Roederer: perpetual reserve started in 2012 in a large tank, aged in a reductive fashion; 34 percent of Collection 242 (2017 base); Collection 243 on 2018 base wines; the Collection series uses one third perpetual reserve since 2012
• Pierre Péters (Le Mesnil-sur-Oger): up to 50 percent of the Cuvée de Réserve Blanc de Blancs; reserve aged in stainless steel, concrete and cask
• Pertois-Lebrun (Cramant): perpetual reserve started in 2013 in three oak foudres
• Bruno Paillard, Henri Giraud, Philipponnat: a perpetual reserve for each multi-vintage blend
• Also named in 2021: R Pouillon & Fils, Bérêche & Fils, Jacques Selosse, Henriot and the Palmer cooperative

Primary sources: the Comité Champagne non-vintage Brut page, https://www.champagne.fr/en/champagne-tasting/type-of-champagne/non-vintage-brut; the Champagne cahier des charges, Decree 2010-1441 (2010 text, EU eAmbrosia register), https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/eambrosia-api/api/v1/attachments/8209; the Consejo Regulador of Jerez-Xérès-Sherry on ageing, https://www.sherry.wine/sherry-wine/production/ageing. Secondary sources: Union des Maisons de Champagne (trade body, descriptive only), https://maisons-champagne.com/en/appellation/stages-in-winemaking/from-grape-must-to-still-wines/article/blending-a-grande-marque-cuvee; Decanter, https://www.decanter.com/premium/a-guide-to-non-vintage-champagne-514906/, https://www.decanter.com/wine-reviews-tastings/sparkling-wine/what-is-a-perpetual-reserve-ask-decanter-478949/, https://www.decanter.com/premium/louis-roederer-masterclass-dfwe-new-york-507249/, https://www.decanter.com/premium/first-taste-louis-roederer-collection-242-462494/, https://www.decanter.com/premium/pierre-peters-producer-profile-463873/, https://www.decanter.com/premium/collectors-guide-champagne-523470/, https://www.decanter.com/features/prestige-champagne-cr-me-de-la-cr-me-245671/, https://www.decanter.com/magazine/bubbling-up-champagnes-249626/, https://www.decanter.com/premium/first-taste-krug-grande-cuvee-172eme-edition-542138/, https://www.decanter.com/premium/krug-grande-cuvee-new-170th-edition-and-vertical-tasting-481116/, https://www.decanter.com/magazine/its-not-just-a-drink-249956/; The Drinks Business, https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2021/07/new-roederer-cuvee-marks-end-of-an-era-for-brut-nv-champagne/, https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2021/01/liberty-named-uk-agent-for-pierre-peters-champagne/. Last verified 2026-11-13