There are few in the world who aren’t aware of Moët & Chandon. Founded in 1743, Maison Moët is the largest producer of champagne in the world, putting 30 million bottles of magic under cork each year. The Moët & Chandon name is quite simply synonymous with elevated celebration and quality, no more so than when a Grand Vintage is declared. 

Each champagne brand has a house style. For Moët & Chandon it is the beloved Moët Impérial Brut NV. Non-vintage champagne is a combination of wines from different years blended together to create the signature Moët & Chandon style we adore every time we raise our glasses to toast successes. When it comes to this house style, we expect it to taste the same year after year. This consistency of taste and quality is the very hallmark of a non-vintage champagne. 

When it comes to vintage champagne, we move into another echelon of quality and excellence. A vintage champagne is rare and special, with no more than three vintages declared within a decade. These wines are the very best that a maison has to offer, with only grapes from that single year harvest used to create a vintage wine. A vintage champagne must also be aged for a period of at least three years, unlike their non-vintage counterparts that can be released after only 15 months.

Each vintage champagne release should be unique. At Moët & Chandon, each Grand Vintage is a story of a moment in time: the weather, the sunshine hours, the grapes, the harvest and the winemaking team. Grand Vintage is where the Moët & Chandon winemaking team really show not just their expertise, but their passion. This is the time when the job of making great champagne becomes so much more, it becomes an expression of love for the craft of making champagne. 

The job of deciding what becomes the final product belongs to the Cellar Master or Chef de Cave of the maison. The Moët & Chandon Chef de Cave, Benoit Gouez, has been part of Moët & Chandon’s winemaking team since 1998 and has held the prestigious Cellar Master role since 2005. With the honour of leading the team comes the great responsibility of ensuring the end result is the very best that it can be. Says Benoit of the Trilogy of Light, “Each Grand Vintage is my interpretation of a specific year and, as such, is unique. This Trilogy is composed of a Grand Vintage and two Grand Vintage Collection champagnes, all different, but products of relatively similar climatic conditions, forming a one-of-a-kind trio to tell their shared Tale of Light.”

And what a tale these wines tell, with not only the story of each unique vintage but also the experience of the impact of different maturation periods on champagnes of this calibre. In the case of Grand Vintage 1999, imbibers will be able to experience first hand the evolution of premium champagne, it having spent more than two decades in bottle. Grand Vintage 2006 is the only chardonnay-dominant champagne in the trilogy, with more than fifteen years spent maturing on lees. Then comes Grand Vintage 2015, the youngest of the three, with a mere six years maturing in the cellars at Moët & Chandon. Still so youthful and emerging, Grand Vintage 2015 is easily described as the first rays of sunshine at dawn, breaking through the dark as the opening stanza of this stunning tale of light.

The availability of Grand Vintage collection champagnes such as 2006 and 1999 individually is in itself rare. So being part of the trilogy, in combination with the most recent Grand Vintage 2015, makes this truly special. This release is made even more scarce by the fact that the Trilogy of Light is strictly limited to no more than 1,000 worldwide. Lovers of luxury looking to secure their very own piece of Moët & Chandon’s history and tradition should not hesitate when the collection is released later this year. 

Housed in a collectable wooden case, less than 1000 collections of the Tale of Light Trilogy are available worldwide, and can be purchased in New Zealand from late 2023 exclusively at Shop Moët. The Grand Vintage 2015 will shortly be available from The Good Wine Co.