Not all bubbles are created equal. Here is where to spend your money, and why it matters.
Champagne is the only wine category where the house you choose says as much about your taste as the wine in the glass. A bottle of Burgundy is largely about the vineyard. Champagne is about philosophy, obsession, and centuries of institutional knowledge. The grandes maisons of Reims and Epernay have been refining their approaches since the 18th century, building house styles so distinct you can identify them blind. This is not a category for cutting corners or chasing deals. The five houses below, selected by Pursuitist, represent the undisputed pinnacle: producers whose flagship cuvees belong on any serious cellar list, whose reputations are built on consistency across decades, and whose wines genuinely reward the investment.
We cross-referenced scores from our food and wine editors, consulted sommeliers at three Michelin-starred restaurants, and drew on the guidance of collectors who have been buying these bottles since the 1990s. The result: five houses that a knowledgeable enthusiast would point to without hesitation.
1. Krug
Flagship: Krug Grande Cuvee | From $285 per bottle
Joseph Krug founded his house in Reims in 1843 with a singular conviction: that the best Champagne need not be at the mercy of any single harvest. The Grande Cuvee, his answer to the tyranny of vintage variation, is reassembled every year from over 120 individual wines sourced across 10 or more different vintages, the oldest sometimes reaching back 15 years. The current 170th Edition blends Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier from 250 plots across the region, aged no fewer than six years in the cellar before release.
The result is the most intellectually complex non-vintage Champagne produced anywhere in the world. Jancis Robinson famously called it a wine for “more intellectual drinkers.” On the nose: toasted brioche, roasted hazelnuts, dried apricot, citrus zest. On the palate: a precision and length that makes most prestige cuvees feel like they are rushing to the finish. Krug is also the only house to produce five distinct prestige cuvees, including the legendary single-vineyard Clos du Mesnil and Clos d’Ambonnay, both aged over a decade before release.
Pursuitist Take: Krug is the one bottle you open when you want to prove a point. It is intellectual without being cold, generous without being obvious, and it ages in the cellar with a patience that feels almost personal. The fact that each bottle carries a six-digit code you can enter online to see its full history is the kind of detail that makes obsessives out of normal people. There is nothing else like it.
Key Facts: Founded 1843, Reims | 250 plots, 10+ vintages in each Grande Cuvee blend | Minimum 6 years aging | Owned by LVMH since 1999
2. Louis Roederer
Flagship: Cristal Brut Vintage | From $360 per bottle
Cristal began as a personal commission. In 1876, Tsar Alexander II asked Louis Roederer to create a Champagne exclusively for the Imperial Court, bottled in clear crystal glass without the traditional punt at the base because he feared assassination and wanted to be certain nothing was concealed in the bottle. The wine and the story both stuck. Today, Cristal is one of the most recognizable luxury bottles on earth, and unlike most icons of its stature, it earns its reputation with every vintage.
What separates Roederer from the rest of the grandes maisons is ownership. The house controls 100% of its vineyard sources, farming 245 hectares of estate vines across 45 plots in the seven top Grand Cru villages of the Montagne de Reims, the Marne Valley, and the Cote des Blancs. Cristal is a blend of 60% Pinot Noir and 40% Chardonnay, fermented 25% in oak, with no malolactic fermentation, rested on its lees for a minimum of five years. The current release, the 2016 vintage, delivers lemon zest, white peach, roasted almond, and a chalky mineral finish that lingers effortlessly.
Pursuitist Take: Cristal’s complicated cultural baggage, the hip-hop era, the boycotts, the bling associations, has actually done it a favor. Serious wine drinkers stopped paying attention for a decade, and in that time Roederer quietly produced some of the most consistent, terroir-driven vintage Champagnes of the modern era. The 2013 and 2016 vintages are particularly spectacular. If you dismissed it, it is time to look again.
Key Facts: Founded 1776, Reims | 100% estate vineyards | 60% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay | Minimum 5 years lees aging | Produced only in declared vintages
3. Dom Perignon
Flagship: Dom Perignon Vintage | From $250 per bottle
Dom Perignon is the most famous Champagne in the world, and it has earned that distinction honestly. Conceived by Moet & Chandon and released as its own standalone brand in 1936, Dom Perignon is unique in the prestige cuvee landscape: it produces only vintage Champagne, full stop. If a year is not good enough, the house simply does not release one. There have been only 43 vintages released since the first 1921. Each bottle ages for a minimum of seven years in the historic caves beneath the Abbey of Hautvillers, the 17th-century home of the Benedictine monk who gave the brand its name.
The Plenititude system is where things get seriously interesting. A single vintage is released in three distinct stages: P1 (standard release), P2 (second plenititude, released approximately 16 years after harvest), and the extraordinarily rare P3 (third plenititude, released after 25 or more years). The P2 releases, currently the 2004 at around $450, represent some of the most extraordinary drinking in all of Champagne. Creative Director Lenny Kravitz has produced limited edition packaging collaborations that have become collector objects in their own right.
Pursuitist Take: Critics spend a lot of time debating whether Dom Perignon justifies its fame. The answer is yes, particularly when you find the right vintage at the right moment of development. The 2008 is a landmark bottle; the 2004 P2 is a revelation. It is the one Champagne that works equally well at a stadium celebration and at a three-star dinner. That range is genuinely rare.
Key Facts: Founded as a brand 1936 | Vintage only, no NV releases | Minimum 7 years aging for P1 | Grapes sourced from Grand Cru vineyards | Three Plenititude tiers
4. Salon
Flagship: Salon Cuvee S Le Mesnil Blanc de Blancs | From $500 per bottle
Salon is the most austere, uncompromising Champagne house in the region, and in this context that is the highest possible compliment. Eugene-Aime Salon founded the house in 1911 with a philosophy so extreme it remains unique to this day: one grape variety (Chardonnay), one village (Le Mesnil-sur-Oger), one vineyard (a single Grand Cru plot), one cuvee, and production only in vintages Salon’s cellarmaster considers genuinely exceptional. In an average decade, Salon releases roughly five vintages. Between 1971 and 1981, it released nothing at all.
The wine itself is legendary among collectors. From the first nose, it announces itself: chalk, lemon curd, green apple, white flowers, and a mineral precision that feels almost geological. It ages for a decade in Salon’s cellars before release, and in the bottle it rewards another 10 to 20 years of patience. The current available vintage, the 2013, averages around $500 a bottle at retail and is already considered one of the finer releases of the decade. The sister house Delamotte, which shares the same Le Mesnil vineyards, offers an accessible entry point for those who want to taste the terroir without the price.
Pursuitist Take: Salon is what happens when a producer refuses to make any concessions whatsoever. It is difficult to find, expensive when you do, and entirely worth it. The 2002 vintage, now approaching its peak, is the kind of Champagne that changes your reference point for what the category can actually achieve. Buy the 2013 now and do not touch it for five years. You will be glad you waited.
Key Facts: Founded 1911, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger | 100% Chardonnay, single village | Produced in exceptional vintages only | Minimum 10 years cellar aging | Sister house: Delamotte
5. Bollinger
Flagship: Bollinger R.D. (Recently Disgorged) | From $350 per bottle
Bollinger is the house for people who find most Champagne too polite. Founded in 1829 in Ay, a Grand Cru village with some of the oldest and most prized Pinot Noir vines in the region, Bollinger has always favored depth, structure, and longevity over the bright, airy freshness that defines so many of its neighbors. The Special Cuvee NV, the everyday bottling, is already a richer, more serious wine than most houses’ top releases. The La Grande Annee vintage, produced only in the best years, steps it up considerably: Pinot Noir-dominant, oak-fermented in old barrels, aged on its lees for a minimum of five years.
The R.D., which stands for Recently Disgorged, is the full expression of the Bollinger philosophy. A selected vintage is kept on its lees for between 8 and 12 years before disgorgement, preserving the wine’s freshness and intensity in a way that standard aging cannot replicate. The current R.D. 2008 release, which spent 12 years on its lees, is widely regarded as one of the finest Bollingers in decades. Reserve wines at the house are stored in old magnum bottles, and traditional hand-riddling is still practiced, two gestures toward quality that most houses abandoned long ago. James Bond has ordered Bollinger exclusively since the 1979 film Moonraker, which says something, even if you are skeptical of cinematic endorsements.
Pursuitist Take: Bollinger is the house you discover when you start to find other great Champagnes slightly one-dimensional. The richness here is not heavy; it is layered. The R.D. 2008 in particular has a depth and complexity that you can sit with for an entire evening. It is also the rare luxury Champagne that pairs brilliantly with food, particularly aged Comté, roasted chicken, and anything truffle-forward.
Key Facts: Founded 1829, Ay | Pinot Noir-dominant house style | Reserve wines stored in old magnums | Hand-riddling still practiced | R.D. series aged 8 to 12 years on lees
The Pursuitist Verdict
The houses above do not compete with each other so much as occupy entirely different philosophies of what Champagne can be. Krug is the intellectual. Roederer is the purist. Dom Perignon is the icon with genuine substance behind it. Salon is the ascetic. Bollinger is the sensualist. The right answer depends entirely on the occasion and, frankly, your mood on a given evening.
What they share is this: every bottle from every house on this list has been made with a specificity of intention that the broader Champagne market cannot match. You are not paying for a label. You are paying for a cellarmaster’s decision to hold that wine for a decade, for a winemaker’s refusal to compromise in a difficult year, for an institution’s reputation staked on every release. That, in the end, is what luxury actually means in a glass.
