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Laurent Perrier’s ‘impressive’ core premium cuvées boost the mix

18 November 2025 By Giles Fallowfield

While most Champagne brands have been trying to boost sales of their premium lines outside of the mainstream, white, Brut Non-vintage styles that still dominate volumes, Laurent Perrier’s seven key premium wines now account for an impressive 41% of the brand’s turnover. Giles Fallowfield reports from a recent tasting with oenologist Constance Delaire.

Most champagne brands have been trying to boost sales of their premium lines outside of the mainstream, white, Brut Non-vintage styles that still dominate volumes and account for around four out of every five bottles sold in the category in the UK (83% in 2024). Improving the mix [of sales] ie selling more of your more expensive lines, has become something of mantra for the whole of Champagne, faced with rising costs across the board.

However, while everyone aiming to do this, and some really need to do so urgently just to stay in business, actually achieving it is a lot harder than talking about it.

When Laurent-Perrier’s communication focused oenologist Constance Delaire presented four of the seven key premium wines in the house’s range to the trade last month at 67 Pall Mall, she noted that along with prestige line Grand Siècle and Ultra Brut, they now account for 41.9% of the producer’s turnover (April 2024-May 2025). That’s impressive.

This goes some way to explaining how in the recent survey looking at turnover in 2024 of top champagne groups produced by the Union des Maisons de Champagne (UMC), Laurent-Perrier moved up to third spot only behind LVMH and Vranken-Pommery Monopole with a figure of €239.43m. It was ahead of Lanson BCC, Louis Roederer, Taittinger, Bollinger and Pernod Ricard (Mumm & Perrier-Jouet) listed in declining order of turnover, though that is clearly not the same as profit.

Delaire is part of the relatively new winemaking team working closely with the aptly named chef de cave Olivier Vigneron at the house in Tours-sur-Marne. Vigneron himself only took over earlier this year but knows the ways things work at LP having operated alongside former chef de cave Michel Fauconnet for two decades. He also worked with the very talented Alain Terrier before, the winemaker who created some of Laurent Perrier’s unique cuvées working hand-in-hand with long-term owner and driving force behind its success, Bernard de Nonancourt.

The four cuvées Delaire talked us through were, in order of tasting Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature; Heritage; Brut Millésimé 2015 and finally Cuvée Rosé. It’s unusual to find someone clearly knowledgeable about the wines, entirely comfortable talking about them and very well prepared for journalists detailed questions, which she fielded adroitly, in her very first outing, as it were. But Delaire managed this not inconsiderable feat.

Nature Blanc de Blancs

She was helped by the wines showing strongly, and this was partly because no-one had chilled them to death just prior to the tasting (other producers should take note). I had a bottle of the Brut Nature Blanc de Blancs earlier this year which I thought very impressive and retasting this, the third such cuvée they have elaborated, underlines that impression. It has a very attractive mid-palate concentration, grip and chalkiness that only ageing and time on the cork can bring to such a non-dosée creation, though high quality reserve wines are certainly part of the equation too. Tasted blind you would be hard pushed to guess it’s non-dosée.

This current blend, we learn from Delaire, is based on the 2016 harvest, while its predecessor was from ’14 and the first such wine released by the house mainly from 2012. It’s in effect a follow-on wine from LP’s Ultra Brut – the first large scale non-dosée blend from any major house which the aforementioned Terrier created with the 1976 harvest, the wine being released in 1981.

Chardonnay from LP’s home cru of Tours-sur-Marne and Villers Marmery, whose south-east facing slopes help create a very particular, quite powerful Chardonnay style often described by locals as ‘Pinote’, play an important part in the blend. They rub along very nicely with Chardonnay sourced from grands crus Avize, Cramant, Oiry and Chouilly in the Côte des Blancs.

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This new creation, like its immediate predecessor, is a 60/40 blend of base year to reserve wine, with the 40% reserve wine all coming from the previous 2014 incarnation. It was disgorged in October 2024 (so had 12 months on the cork at the time we tasted in last month). But they disgorge to order.

Delaire reiterates that the LP house style is built around three pillars: freshness, purity and elegance which seems particularly apposite when tasting the Brut Nature.

Heritage

We move on to Heritage which LP refers to as the ‘heritage of Grand Siècle Savoir-Faire’. This multi vintage blend of pure reserve wines is the newest in the LP stable and was only launched last July (2024) and comes 30% from 2019, 30% from 2018, 20% from 16 and 20% from the 2014 harvest. Quite a pedigree of vintages.

The 2014 portion is all Chardonnay and 60% of the 2016 component is too, while the total blend is 45% Pinot Noir to 55% Chardonnay. It’s sourced from a much broader, cross appellation mix of different crus, 40 in all but here Villers Mamery and Vertus are central, Delaire says. Rounded with a nicely balanced palate it develops very attractively in glass over the duration of the tasting.

Brut Millésimé 2015

Next up is LP’s Brut Millésimé 2015 (2018 will be next on the market) which follows the fine 2012 release, though that, Delaire notes, was more of a Chardonnay year. The blend is 50/50 Chardonnay/Pinot Noir and it nearly all comes from Grands Crus, eight in all; Chouilly, Oger, Cramant, and Oiry for Chardonnay, Tours-sur-Marne, Aÿ, Verzenay and Ambonnay, plus Premier Cru Tauxières for Pinot. The Pinot Noir is more to the fore currently with ripe yellow fruit and an attractive spiciness. “We don’t use Aÿ Pinot in Grande Siècle because it has too much power and there we are looking more for finesse,” Delaire shares.

Cuvée Rosé

The tasting ends with LP’s Cuvée Rosé, another De Nonancourt creation and arguably the house’s best known cuvée, that’s made by maceration rather than blending red wine with a white champagne base, as most producers in champagne elaborate their pinks. An all-Pinot Noir creation, this release is 2019 based (85%) so it should and does impress. It needs some time and they prefer to see a minimum of five years ageing before release. It displays those typical ‘basket of red fruit’ aromas of raspberry, redcurrant, strawberry and black cherry and an attractive mouth-watering finish.

Retail stockists and prices:
Cuvée Rosé, Sainsbury’s, £82 (£61.50 currently if art of a six bottle purchase)
Vintage 2015, Waitrose, £80
Heritage, Laithwaites, £75.99
Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature, Majestic, £90 (£80 Mix Six price)