Last Updated: 13 December 2005

With yields in excess of 15,000 kilos per hectare, few producers will have difficulty in reaching the maximum yield set by the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC) of 13,000 kilos per hectare.

With an area of productive vineyard just below 32,000 hectares, there will be around 312m bottles of Champagne produced from the harvest, only slightly more than was consumed worldwide in 2004.

Picking began in the second week of September and was mostly completed before the end of the month with Chardonnay generally producing the best quality. Before the harvest, there had been worries about rot developing in a damp humid early-September. But a change in the weather from 17 September brought dry sunny days and cool evenings, helping to save previously under-ripe Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, though a number of winemakers still commented that the Chardonnay was generally riper than other varieties.

Volumes were higher than was originally expected because of the unusually large bunches, according to Louis Roederer’s winemaker Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon. “We expected yields to be around 13,000kg/ha but we got 15% more because of the bunch sizes,” Lecaillon said. Roederer reckons it should be able to vintage 2005 but said it was too early to say for certain.