Champagne Diamonds are Natural Color Diamonds in beautiful Champagne tones, ranging from the pale soft Sherry tones to rich medium Champagne to deep dark Cognac.
When diamonds are recovered from the mines, the “colorless” diamonds are recovered together with their champagne and fancy color cousins, as well as lower-grade diamonds used for industrial use. The “colorless”, champagne, and fancy color diamonds are all “real”, legitimate diamonds, differentiated only by their color and rarity (especially in the case of the pink, blue, and green fancy color stones, for example) . The “colorless”, champagne, and fancy color diamonds are all cut and polished according to the same criteria, and then graded according to the same standards for carat weight, clarity and cut.
Color
The basic difference in their rating comes with color, where “colorless” stones are graded according to GIA, EGL, IGI, or similar laboratory standards, as are fancy color stones. Champagne diamonds are graded according to a simpler C1-C7 color scale created by the Champagne Diamond Registry in the early 1990’s.
Cut
Bad cutting can affect the color in a diamond, often leading to uneven color-zoning. In fancy colored diamonds, “bow ties” often appear in those cut in fancy shapes. This is not necessarily bad unless it dramatically affects the color of the stone.
Clarity
Like all diamonds, colored stones come in a range of clarities. The amount of color usually outweighs clarity unless the stone is visibly marked.
Source
Although the rough stones which are polished into champagne diamonds can come from many sources, many champagne diamonds originate in the Argyle mines, in the northwest corner of Australia. Argyle was one of the largest mine deposits ever found, in the late 1970’s. It has been mined for the last thirty years, yielding a large quantity of both colorless and champagne diamonds, as well as lower-grade industrial diamonds.
Noteworthy Champagnes
The Golden Giant is a giant Champagne colored diamond, which weighs 407.43 carats. It is owned by Glick of New York. The privately-owned Earth Star is a pear shape Cognac diamond of 111.59 carats.
Maria Menounos, E! Reporter, interviewed the stars on the red carpet wearing champagne diamond dress and champagne diamond jewelry at the 2004 Acadamy Awards