Featuring a 30-foot-long semicircular bar, Magnum offers vintage Champagne (10 labels are available) by the glass or the bottle.

"This year's 1999 vintage Champagne should be a great one, unless we get hail or something before the harvest is over," Mr. Peters said, "but it won't be ready to drink until 2006 or 2007."

Is vintage Champagne better than non-vintage?

Sparkling Vouvrays tend not to have the same aging potential as their still wine counterparts or vintage dated Champagne and are usually meant to be consumed within 3 years of vintage or, for non-vintage bottling, soon after purchase.

Next are vintage Champagnes, made from grapes all harvested in the same year.

A As vintage Champagne is not released before it is three years old it is a relatively mature wine and is thus ready to drink when available in Sainsbury's.

The selection included three vintage Champagnes - only one made the top 10 - as well as nine blanc de blancs, made entirely from Chardonnay.

Thanks to Ann Reinking's choreography and a top-drawer performance from Bebe Neuwirth, this most cynical of the Kander-Ebb musicals remains vintage Champagne (2:30).

A vintage wine, on the other hand, must be made from the grapes of a single harvest, and there have been vintage Champagnes that only faintly reflected the styles of the houses that made them.

The Côtes des Blancs is the source of Chardonnay for many vintage Champagnes and prestige cuvées from the large Champagne houses.