An exceptional year 2026 from all points of view for French champagne? The 2026 harvest, sparse and of unprecedented precocity, presents “a potential for very great wines”, estimated the Champagne Committee on Wednesday September 9. The latter also announced that it had obtained authorization to market bottles with more than 13% alcohol.
The French inter-professional association stressed that this exceptional harvest, marked by frost, drought and heat waves, could become “the norm” due to climate change.
This temporary exemption from the specifications should allow the “few winegrowers” whose harvested grapes already have a high degree of alcohol, to produce wines with up to 15% alcohol, even after possible chaptalization, that is to say the addition of sugars during the double fermentation process of champagne, according to the Champagne Committee.
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Even if he recognizes that “it is still too early to definitively qualify the wines from the 2026 harvest”, the latter underlined during a press conference that the grapes harvested this year are reminiscent of “several great historic vintages of the 20the century”.
Thus, the 2026 harvest presents “a potential for very great wines”, he specifies in a press release.
A return at a very low level compared to recent years
The agronomic yield has, for its part, reached a very low level compared to recent years, of around 7,000 kg per hectare – compared to 9,900 kg per hectare in 2025 –, underlined Maxime Toubart, co-president of the Champagne committee.
This figure is explained by difficult climatic conditions: “episodes of spring frost of historic intensity, very early flowering and five episodes of heatwave during the summer”, details the Champagne committee.
The 2026 harvest was the earliest ever observed in Champagne, with the first cuts of secateurs on August 6 and a “generalization of the harvest” on August 17, two weeks earlier than in 2025, an already early year, according to the committee.
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Due to climate change, “surely this exceptional harvest will be the norm in around ten or fifteen years”, recognizes Maxime Toubart, stressing that it “must make us think about the Champagne of tomorrow”. The drop in agronomic yield should not, however, prevent the vineyard from reaching the marketable quota, set this year at 8,800 kg per hectare.
Indeed, champagne being mainly a blended wine, “when we face a harvest deficit (…) the (missing) quantities are taken out of the inter-professional reserve and in general, to the nearest kilo, we reach the volume that we have decided” to market, explains David Chatillon, president of the Union of Champagne houses and co-president of the Champagne committee.
With AFP
