Champagne finder
Which champagne suits you?
Not sure which champagne to choose? Answer a few short questions about your taste, the occasion and your budget, and the finder will search our own selection for what suits you.
What is the bottle for?
Which flavour appeals to you most?
White or Rosé?
How dry would you like it?
What is your budget per bottle?
Here's what suits you
Based on:
How to choose champagne
Which champagne should I buy?
Which champagne to buy depends on three things: how dry you like it, which style you enjoy and the occasion you're pouring it for. Only then does the budget come in. Start with your own taste, not with a famous name or a medal.
- How dry: Brut is dry, Extra Brut and Brut Nature are usually crisper still.
- Which style: Blanc de Blancs is usually fresh, Blanc de Noirs fuller, rosé fruitier.
- Which occasion: for drinks, pick something fresh; at the table, it can be fuller.
Good champagne: our picks by occasion
We do everything we can to make our portfolio as good as possible, and we put a lot of time into it. If a bottle sells out, it simply drops off this page.
Drinks and aperitifs
A fresh champagne with plenty of Chardonnay and little or no oak goes well with salty nibbles.
Christmas dinner
The main course calls for a fuller champagne with plenty of Pinot Noir or Meunier, oak-aged if you like.
New Year's Eve
Choose a round, approachable champagne with soft acidity: not everyone likes a very crisp style.
As a gift
Give a Prestige, Millésime, Parcellaire or magnum: a bottle the recipient is unlikely to buy for themselves.
If you prefer rosé
A fresh rosé with red fruit goes well with smoked salmon. The colour comes from the skins of black grapes or from a little red wine.
As dry as possible
Choose a Brut Nature or an Extra Brut with almost no dosage: that way you taste the wine itself.
Which champagne for Christmas and New Year's Eve?
For Christmas and the rest of the festive season, choose your champagne course by course: a fresh Blanc de Blancs with the aperitif and starter, a fuller Blanc de Noirs with the main course. On New Year's Eve, toast at midnight with a round champagne or a rosé.
- Aperitif: start fresh, with a Blanc de Blancs and salty nibbles.
- Starter: oysters, raw fish or beurre blanc call for a young, crisp champagne without oak.
- Main course: with poultry or mushrooms, a fuller Blanc de Noirs works well, oak-aged if you like.
- Cheese: mature cheese goes with champagne, blue cheese with ratafia.
- Dessert: dry champagne clashes with sweet dishes. With dark chocolate, ratafia works better.
- New Year's Eve: toast with a round, approachable champagne or a rosé.
Read more about snacks to enjoy with champagne and chilling champagne.
Dry or sweet: what do Brut, Extra Brut and Brut Nature mean?
Brut, Extra Brut and Brut Nature are all dry. The difference is in the sugar per litre, mostly from the dosage: Brut Nature less than 3 grams, Extra Brut 0 to 6, Brut less than 12. Our selection is mostly Extra Brut.
| On the label | Grams of sugar per litre | In our range |
|---|---|---|
| Brut Nature | less than 3, no dosage | yes |
| Extra Brut | 0 to 6 | yes |
| Brut | less than 12 | yes |
| Extra Sec | 12 to 17 | no |
| Sec | 17 to 32 | no |
| Demi-Sec | 32 to 50 | no |
| Doux | more than 50 | no |
We don't stock sweet champagne such as Demi-Sec; for something sweet, there's ratafia. And Brut tells you little about the grams: in our range it's sometimes 3 grams of sugar per litre, sometimes 11.
Blanc de Blancs, Blanc de Noirs or rosé: which style suits you?
Choose Blanc de Blancs if you like it fresh and crisp, Blanc de Noirs if you want something fuller, and rosé for more red fruit. Blanc de Blancs is made from white grapes (usually Chardonnay), Blanc de Noirs from black ones (Pinot Noir or Meunier).
- Blanc de Blancs is usually fresh and mineral. A young Blanc de Blancs without oak goes well with oysters.
- Blanc de Noirs is fuller, with enough body for the dinner table.
- Rosé champagne ranges from fresh and fruity to full-bodied.
You can read more about the grapes in our piece on the seven grape varieties in Champagne.
What makes a good champagne, and what does the price say about quality?
You can judge a good champagne yourself, by taste: balance, a fine mousse and a long finish. The price says something about time: by law, non-vintage champagne ages for at least fifteen months and a Millésime for at least three years, and makers often wait much longer. A high price says nothing about your taste.
We work with eight champagne houses, each with its own story; for many of them, we are the exclusive importer for the Netherlands.
Which champagne makes a good gift?
A good champagne gift suits the recipient's taste, not your own. If you don't know their taste, choose an approachable style. You'll find gift-ready bottles under champagne gifts and gift sets, and for your business under corporate gifts.
Questions about choosing champagne
Is Brut champagne sweet or dry?
Brut is dry: less than 12 grams of sugar per litre, meant for balance, not to make the wine sweet. Confusingly, Extra Sec, Sec and Demi-Sec are actually sweeter.
How does the champagne finder work?
The finder weighs up the occasion, your taste, white or rosé, your budget and how dry you like it. For taste it looks at each bottle's grapes, the area, how old the wine is (the youngest harvest and any reserve wine), how long it aged on the lees and the winemaker's choices: the oak and whether malolactic fermentation took place. For dryness it looks at the grams of sugar per litre. You only see champagne that is in stock, ideally from three different producers.
What is a good champagne for beginners?
Start with a supple champagne without oak and with a few grams of dosage. Next time, try a Blanc de Blancs or a Blanc de Noirs, and you'll find out which way you lean.
Grower champagne or a big house: what's the difference?
A big house buys most of its grapes from hundreds of growers and turns them into a consistent house style. Grower champagne comes from the maker's own plots, often around a single village: you taste the place.
Compiled by Jim Dronk, Champagne Master-Level, Wine Scholar Guild