Champagne Harvest 2026: Early, Small and Remarkable, with David Chatillon and Maxime Toubart

The short answer: the 2026 harvest was exceptionally early and yielded less than Champagne had planned for, but the quality looks remarkably promising. David Chatillon and Maxime Toubart explain why the numbers tell only part of the story.

I recorded this conversation in Champagne in early September, by which time the harvest was already well behind us. That alone told me we were dealing with an unusual year. My guests were David Chatillon, President of the Union des Maisons de Champagne (UMC), and Maxime Toubart, President of the Syndicat Général des Vignerons de la Champagne (SGV). Together, they co-chair the Comité Champagne, bringing the Houses and growers to the same table.

The 2026 season had already attracted some gloomy early commentary, largely because of the speed of ripening and the high potential alcohol. Yet in conversations with producers, I was hearing a more complicated story: a very early, dry year, with difficult regional contrasts, but exceptionally healthy grapes and the potential for remarkable wines. Here is what the two men closest to Champagne’s collective decisions told me.

How Champagne sets its yield

Each July, growers and Houses meet through the Comité Champagne to set the commercial yield: the quantity of grapes each hectare may contribute to the marketable crop. This is not a prediction of how much the vineyards will produce. It is an economic decision, informed by three inputs: the level of stocks in cellars, shipment provisions, and the stock level the region wants to reach. 

For 2026, that commercial yield was set at 8,800 kg per hectare. The actual agricultural yield (the grapes producers were able to harvest) would turn out to be significantly lower in many places. The distinction is that the number set in July is about how much Champagne needs to make available, not a promise that nature will provide it.

David, who represents the Houses, described the partnership between Houses and growers as a shared interest, even when their immediate priorities differ. “Our organisation is quite unique, because even if we could think that our interests are contradictory, we are convinced - and our predecessors too - that we are on the same ship,” he said. “No professional family can win if the other one loses.” Maxime put it from the growers’ side: “Everybody in Champagne knows that the collectivity is more important than the individual goals.” He noted colleagues in the south of France who once worked together and decided to become more individual. “Today in Champagne, we are sure of the necessity to speak together and find the best solution for everybody.”

The system’s flexibility runs both ways. In 2020, shipments were down while the agricultural yield was very high; the region set a deliberately low economic yield anyway, because it was in the interest of both families, even though it was not easy for growers to accept. And when the harvest is too big for the economy’s needs, the excess goes into the interprofessional reserve. “There is no precise relation between the agricultural and the economic yields,” David said.

A harvest of two halves: quality and quantity

The season was dry and sunny, with rapid ripening and little water. Maxime referenced his grandparents who planted the same vineyards he works today, some fifty years on - but the meteorology, he said, has become the challenge, and “this year is maybe a new horizon for us”. Small berries helped retain acidity even as sugar levels rose quickly. The grapes were in exceptionally good condition, but their modest size, and the effects of frost and drought, reduced the volume.

In many vineyards, the agricultural yield was around 7,000 kg/ha, well below the 8,800 kg/ha commercial yield. Regional variation was striking. Parts of the Montagne de Reims, David noted, reached roughly 10,000 kg/ha. The Vallée de la Marne was hit by frost, while Maxime described yields of around 3,000 kg/ha in his own village. A regional average can smooth over very different realities for individual growers.

Maxime called the harvest “amazing” while acknowledging that the reduced crop would be hard on some winegrowers: frost and drought, he said, cost some producers up to 40 per cent of their potential volume. David’s assessment was that the first condition for great wine had been fulfilled. “We know we can produce amazing wines [only if] we have amazing grapes,” he told me. “So the time of the harvest and the grapes: it’s not the time of the wine. But with these grapes, the first condition is fulfilled.” What happens next depends on the chefs de cave, and on how they combine this year’s wines with the reserve wines already in their cellars.

Echoes of 1921, 1947 and 1959

The early season brought high potential alcohol, with some still wines reaching 13–14%. That initially caused concern. But the overriding feature was the balance according to David. “The alcohol level is higher than normal, but what is quite incredible is that the balance is typically Champagne. It reminds us of quite old vintages such as 1921, 1947 and 1959 with similar characteristics - and those were huge vintages.”

Such comparisons should be handled with care. At this stage, these are the base wines, not finished champagnes; no one can yet pronounce on the final result. Still, those historic parallels suggest why the vintage has caught the attention of growers and cellar teams. The question is whether the combination of ripeness and freshness will translate into wines of unusual poise.

David attributed much of that freshness to Champagne’s particular harvest and pressing practices. “We have a big technical team at the Comité, and our director told us that the freshness of this harvest is probably largely due to the way we pick the grapes and press,” he said. In Champagne the grapes are picked by hand - not because machines are forbidden, but because the grapes must arrive at the press whole. Whole bunches, gentle pressing, minimal oxygen contact between vineyard and press house: a harvest method shaped by quality rather than speed, and one of the region’s less conspicuous advantages.

Initial readings were high enough to make some producers uneasy. “We were quite afraid just at the beginning of the harvest,” David admitted, “because the first degrees were very, very high for us.” Then the degrees decreased as picking progressed, and the cellar teams grew more comfortable.

Champagne's superpower is its ability to blend across villages and vintages. In more challenging years, it's often the only saving grace to draw upon the majestic library of reserve wines, from previous years, to bring some kind of semblance to otherwise underwhelming wines. In 2026, blending will allow many producers to achieve a more typical alcohol level of 12 to 12.5%. No one chaptalised this year - there was no need.

So, you needn't fear your champagne being labelled at 13%. 

A harder year for Chardonnay

Pinot Noir was described as a particularly strong performer. In the early reports I had heard, Meunier was also doing well. The surprise was Chardonnay: David said it found the conditions more difficult, echoing what had happened in 2025.

That runs against a familiar assumption that Chardonnay handles climate change more easily than the red varieties. I mentioned how the chalky soils of the Côte des Blancs can help Chardonnay through dry periods, which you experience more and more of. Even so, this vintage and the one before are a reminder that no variety is immune to the combination of heat, drought and local conditions. During my time in Champagne in September, I visited the crayères of Charles Heidsieck and saw the unusual decay of chalk, having fallen from above, due to the extreme dryness.

What the market is telling Champagne

Champagne shipped 266 million bottles in 2025. David spoke the day after the UMC’s general assembly, and the mood there was measured. “Champagne is a good way to measure the mood of the people, and the mood is linked to the growth, the peace,” he said. Each time there is a war, geopolitical tension, cost-of-living pressure, the mood sours - and that is a problem for champagne. Exports are doing well quite everywhere, even in Europe; the problem is France. And the lack in France, David said, is really due to the mood: the geopolitical situation, complicated French politics, next year’s presidential elections, weak growth - everything combined. Growth overseas is not yet sufficient to make up for it.

The market also has a practical effect on the vineyard. On average, Champagne keeps around three years of stock in its cellars. As David explained it, for every extra bottle sold, producers need to put three more into stock. The reverse is true when sales fall: selling fewer bottles also eases pressure on cellars. “It’s very difficult to regulate,” he said. High stocks are why commercial yields have been held low for three consecutive years. The collective aim is to return to a more normal level of around 300 million bottles shipped per year, supported by interprofessional tools, and each producer - grower and House alike - is working to reach that level again.

There are shifts in what people choose. Prestige cuvées surged after COVID, but David said they have recently suffered more than non-vintage wines under cost-of-living pressure. Rosé, by contrast, is growing strongly - “we thought at one time that it was about to die, that it was just one shot”, he said, “but now it’s a real market, a real category that people appreciate a lot”. Low dosage remains part of the conversation, too.

Maxime made the case for keeping champagne understandable. Twenty years ago “champagne was brut, blending was brut and everybody produced brut”. Then the market's curiosity led growers and chefs de cave to produce grand cuvées, mono crus, mono cepages, special things. “Now maybe we are at the end of that,” he suggested. Champagne is not Burgundy, “champagne is champagne”, and while producers like Anselme Selosse make wonderfully different things, mostly champagne is a brut, a wonderful moment, an experience. “Champagne must be accessible. It’s difficult to understand champagne when it’s a special cuvée, with a special dosage, with mono cepage, when you add a lot of things like that - you lose a few people. We just want to drink an amazing wine with pop and bubbles and a good explanation. It's about the pleasure.”

That idea sits alongside a long history of adaptation. Seventy or eighty years ago, champagne was often served as a dessert wine. Today, one wine may accompany a whole meal. The region’s styles changed with the way people ate and drank; without that adaptation, champagne might have disappeared from the table. The challenge now is to understand not only buyers, but the people who ultimately drink the wine. “We know our clients, but our clients are not the consumers,” he said.

The market itself is not one market. Maxime contrasted Japan, where people may buy a bottle to drink at home, with France’s stronger restaurant culture, and with the United States. In the nineteenth century, Houses made wines to suit Russian, English and American tastes. The principle of reading different markets remains relevant. And, as I said during our conversation, Australians tend to like their champagne fresh.

What 2026 may become

The 2026 vintage is not a verdict yet. It is a reminder that high sugar does not automatically mean a lack of freshness, and that Champagne’s ability to blend across villages and vintages is part of its response to a changing climate. Maxime, for one, sees the year as a possible new frontier: rather than racing to replant with new varieties, he wondered whether the future lies in accepting wines with these characteristics, “this year is a new year, a new possibility for us”. We don’t know yet what these wines will become; we can only taste and learn. The harvest was small and uneven; its quality, by the early evidence, could be exceptional.

I came away thinking less about a simple “good” or “bad” vintage than about the questions it leaves for growers and cellar teams. How do you preserve balance? How do you use reserves wisely? And how can you make wines that remain both distinctive and welcoming?

There were lighter moments, too. Asked to define 2026 in a single word, David chose “early” and Maxime “amazing”; asked whether climate or the market worried him more, David chose the market and Maxime the climate. And Maxime’s most vivid harvest memory reached back to his childhood. It was the end of October, it was raining and there was frost during the harvest, which he dated to 1985. It is a small, human detail, but one that makes the changing face of harvest very real.

What was once an October harvest frost memory now sits beside a season finished by early September.

You can hear my full conversation with David Chatillon and Maxime Toubart on VINE & BUBBLE Podcast episode #35 — also available on Spotify.

For a different perspective on the season at estate level, read The Art of Succession: Caroline Brun’s New Era at Roger Brun, which also considers the demands of the 2026 harvest. And for readers who would like to see the region and meet its people in person, I return to Champagne each year with our Champagne Signature Journeys.

Frequently asked Questions

What was the champagne yield for the 2026 harvest?

The commercial yield set for 2026 was 8,800 kg/ha, but many producers reported an agricultural yield of around 7,000 kg/ha, after a dry, sunny season and frost damage in parts of the Vallée de la Marne. Some villages saw enormous differences: parts of the Montagne de Reims reached around 10,000 kg/ha, while Maxime Toubart’s own village picked roughly 3,000 kg/ha.

When was the champagne harvest in 2026? 

Exceptionally early. The official start date was August 12, 2026 (though some specific early plots and growers began as early as August 6 to August 10). By early September 2026 the harvest was already over, weeks ahead of the traditional October calendar. Rapid ripening and a dry summer compressed the picking window into a matter of days for many growers.

Will there be a 2026 champagne vintage?

No decision is made at harvest time, but the early indications are unusually positive. The balance of the base wines is said to echo great historical vintages such as 1921, 1947 and 1959. Producers will judge their wines over months of aging and blending before any declarations are made.

How does Champagne set its commercial yield each year?

Each July, the two professional families - the Union des Maisons de Champagne for the Houses and the Syndicat Général des Vignerons for the growers - meet as co-presidents of the Comité Champagne. The yield is an economic decision based on three inputs: cellar stocks, shipment provisions and the stock level the region wants to reach. It is deliberately decoupled from the agricultural yield, and excess grapes go into the interprofessional reserve.

Why are Champagne grapes picked by hand?

Grapes in Champagne must arrive at the press whole. Whole, undamaged bunches allow gentle, measured pressing and minimal contact between juice and oxygen, which helps preserve the wine’s freshness. It is one of the reasons Champagne’s pressing practices are regulated by appellation rules.

What is the interprofessional reserve in Champagne?

It is a stock of wine that producers may set aside from each harvest and draw on in later years, within regulated limits. For the 2026 harvest, grapes harvested above the marketable yield of 8,800 kg/ha, up to the maximum yield of 15,500 kg/ha, can be added to the individual reserve, which is capped at 10,000 kg/ha. Nothing above the marketable yield is lost: the reserve is a safety net against climatic hazards or economic fluctuations, and in a small harvest like 2026 producers can also draw on it to complete their yield. Each producer decides what to keep and when to draw, according to their own style and brand needs.

What happens if the harvest is too high in alcohol?

Nothing that blending cannot handle. In 2026 some still wines reached 13 -14% potential alcohol, which caused early concern, but after blending across villages and vintages the average discussed with the Comité Champagne was around 11.8%. No producer needed to chaptalise, and finished champagnes are not expected to be labelled above the usual level.