A cuvée de prestige is a proprietary blended sparkling wine that is considered to be the top of a producer's range. Some of the famous examples include Louis Roederer's Cristal, Laurent-Perrier's Grand Siècle, Moët & Chandon's Dom Pérignon, and Pol Roger's Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill. The first prestige cuvée was Moët & Chandon's Dom Pérignon, launched in 1936 with the 1921 vintage. Until then, Champagne houses produced different cuvées of different quality, but a top range wine produced to the highest standards (with matching price tags) was a new idea.
In fact, Louis Roederer had been producing Cristal since 1876, but this was only for the private consumption of the Russian tsar but Cristal was made available for the public with the 1945 vintage. Then came Taittinger's Comtes de Champagne (first vintage 1952), and Laurent-Perrier's Grand Siècle 'La Cuvée' in 1960, a blend of three vintages (1952, 1953, and 1955) and Perrier Jouët's La Belle Époque. In the last three decades of the 20th century, other Champagne houses followed these with their own prestige cuvées, often named after famous people with a link to that producer and presented in non-standard bottle shapes (following Dom Pérignon's lead with its 18th-century revival design).