It's toasting season! Celebrate with these excellent champagnes at the LCBO

A glass of Champagne, which comes from a region of the same name located in northeastern France, invites you to abandon the world around you for a moment, get lost in its fragrance and taste, its weight, its flavour arc, texture and length. It offers immediate, open-handed pleasure with a refreshing, effervescent disposition. But it also becomes more beautiful with your undivided attention.

That ability to enchant everyone from novices to the aficionados sets Champagne apart from many other serious wines. Barolo can be taut and reserved. Red Burgundy can seem thin to the uninitiated. And on we go. But a good bottle of Champagne is inclusive — especially among the large Champagne houses' non-vintage brut expressions.

Big Champagne houses such as Laurent-Perrier, Moet & Chandon and Bollinger all make a non-vintage-dated, dry-tasting wine with a signature taste profile. These bottles tend to be the least expensive in their portfolios — and the most widely available. So it’s handy to be familiar with some of them. You may like Champagne in general but may find you love one non-vintage brut over another.

Here are six to consider in ascending order of price — all of which are excellent.

The NV Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Champagne (LCBO $61.05) shines straw-hat yellow and opens with the fragrance of lemon Danish pastry — pure, bright and toasty. The attack is sunny and immediately invigorating. Each sip floods in with baked apple and creamy lemon first, then allusions of sliced pear, baked pastry and salted stone emerge and linger. Classic Champagne at a reasonable price. Score: 92

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The NV Taittinger Brut Réserve Champagne (LCBO $75.80) gleams a cool blond hue and draws you in with its vibrant perfume of orchard fruit, honeycomb and almond. Each sip suggests apple tart with chewy, caramelized edges, juicy white peach laced with honey, sliced marzipan and more — tasting sheer, shifting and ethereal. Meanwhile, generous mid-palate concentration lets the wine unspool slowly for that long, layered finish. Score: 92

The NV Laurent-Perrier La Cuvée Brut Champagne (LCBO $75.95) with its cool blond tones with silvery inflections begins with the gentle fragrance of lemon meringue — all cloudlike and airy. The attack is exquisitely delicate, full of finesse and quite precise with flavours of sea air, white flowers, yeasted dough and dried pear — all emerging against a lemon meringue backdrop. An energetic and eloquent expression that tapers slowly to its close. Score: 92

The NV Pol Roger Réserve Brut Champagne (LCBO $86.60) beams pale gold in the glass — very pretty, very bright — while scents of Granny Smith, oyster shell and anise coax you in. The racy green-apple-lemon-lime entry tastes vivid and pure, then recedes to reveal toasty, creamy, saline elegance. Find honey butter on toast, tart lemon curd, biscuits and white blossom as each sip tapers off before leaving behind a chalky limestone finish. Score: 92

The NV Bollinger Special Cuvée Brut Champagne (LCBO $96.45) with its golden hue shows immediate depth on the nose. Opulent aromas of dried apricot and walnut, brioche and candied orange peel lead to a rich, almost full-bodied entry. Wonderfully complex with an intriguingly umami-rich undertow. Intense and buttery, yet luminous and fruit-driven, this wine tastes effortlessly regal. But the pleasure is upfront. The finish is not long. Score: 92

The house of Louis Roederer stopped making non-vintage wines in favour of multi-vintage (MV) entry-level cuvées. The difference is slippery but important. Non-vintage wines are house blends of more than one vintage, generally not disclosed on the label, and are meant to be consistent every year. Multi-vintage wines are blends from specific years not meant to taste exactly the same every year, while maintaining a certain level of house-style conformity.

The entry-level Champagne by Louis Roederer now on shelf at the LCBO is the MV Louis Roederer Collection 244 Champagne (Vintages Essential $100.95). This wine is based on the 2019 vintage with reserve wines from the previous seven years. The colour is pale lemon yellow, the nose deep yet inviting. The fragrance nods toward lemon zest, mandarin and crushed praline. The attack is mouth-filling, saturated yet lit and elegant. Flavours shift from citrusy and toasty to floral and nutty with a markedly mineral salt depth that persists on the long, languid finish. Score: 93 

The holiday season is upon us. For many of us this year, budgets are tight. So it’s understandable if dropping $60 to $100 on a bottle of wine seems extravagant. But Champagne is not just a bottle of wine. It’s a bottle of wonder. And you could pay more for far less.