Dom Pérignon 1981 Prestige

The vintage

1981 was a mid-tier vintage in Champagne — a cool growing season with modest yields. Dom Pérignon declared the vintage and bottled it on the maison's standard schedule. The 1981 has surfaced repeatedly in the maison's Plénitude programme of late-disgorgement re-releases (P2, and more recently P3), each release representing a different stage of bottle maturation from the same base wine.

Style

As with every Dom Pérignon, the 1981 is an assemblage built around Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in roughly equal shares, drawn from the maison's grand cru holdings — no Meunier. The earliest disgorgement (P1) sat on the lees for about seven years before release; the P2 disgorgement returns the same wine after roughly twelve to fifteen years on the lees, with markedly more tertiary character.