Champagne has taken a significant step forward in Australia’s fine-wine collecting landscape, with 14 wines included in LANGTONS’ inaugural Classification of International Wine.
The new 160-wine Classification is particularly interesting because it isn’t based on critic scores or medals. Instead, LANGTONS analysed five years of secondary-market auction data covering every international bottle traded through its system, providing a picture of what Australian collectors are actually buying and competing for.
France dominates with 122 wines, led by Burgundy with 57 and Bordeaux with 37. Champagne’s 14 entries put the region firmly alongside these traditional collecting strongholds. The selection spans established houses including Krug and Bollinger, as well as cult grower Jacques Selosse - itself an interesting reflection of how champagne collecting has evolved.
Champagne has always occupied a different space to Bordeaux and Burgundy. It carries the status and desirability of a luxury object, but fundamentally, it has been a wine we buy to open, share and celebrate with almost immediately.
That is evolving and is something I touched on recently in an article ‘Beyond Bordeaux: Can Champagne Build its Own Culture of Collecting’.
Rare vintages, prestige cuvées, large formats and sought-after grower champagnes are increasingly finding their way into serious cellars. At the same time, champagne is developing greater relevance within the secondary market, where provenance, scarcity, global demand and the ability to hold value are becoming increasingly important.
LANGTONS identifies this as part of a broader shift in collector behaviour. Head of Auctions Michael Anderson says investors are increasingly viewing fine wine not simply as a passion purchase, but as a strategic asset.
For champagne, its inclusion provides something particularly valuable: tangible evidence of its growing position as a collectible fine wine in its own right.
The question now is perhaps not whether champagne can build its own culture of collecting, but what that culture will ultimately look like.
You can read all about Langtons' Classification of International Wine here.
Image supplied by Langtons.
