Champagne Diamonds

Rough Champagne Diamonds

The term "champagne diamond" is used to describe colored diamonds that exhibit hues ranging from light straw to golden or cognac. These unique diamonds have garnered increased interest as designers incorporate them into jewelry and celebrities are spotted wearing them.

While most consumers are familiar with transparent white diamonds, which are highly valued for their lack of color, it is important to note that fancy-colored diamonds are evaluated using a slightly different approach than traditional white diamonds.

For colored diamonds or fancy-colored diamonds, the intensity of color is the most important factor, with clarity, brilliance and fire holding lesser significance. In fact, many fancy champagne diamonds have been known to fetch incredible prices. For example at a Christie's auction in 2011, Elizabeth Taylor's cognac diamond ring with V-SI clarity fetched over $70 thousand per carat. The color of fancy-colored diamonds is evaluated according to hue (the characteristic color), tone (lightness or darkness of color) and saturation (depth or strength of color).

Brown diamonds only began to be marketed in a serious way after the development of the Argyle diamond mine in Australia in 1986. Up until its closure in 2020, the Argyle mine produced about 35 million carats of diamonds per year, nearly a third of the total world production. However, about 80% of the diamonds from the Argyle mine were brown. So the industry faced the problem of a very large supply of brown diamonds with only a small demand.

The jewelry industry adopted two strategies for marketing brown diamonds. Since the supply was large, they were offered at a lower price, usually about 30% less than white diamonds. The industry also introduced new color names to make the product more attractive to consumers. Instead of the dull term "brown diamonds", the terms "champagne" and "cognac" were introduced to make the product more alluring.

Champagne diamonds may be substantially more affordable than white diamonds, but they are natural diamonds and display all the virtues of diamond; remarkable hardness (10 on the Mohs scale), a very high refractive index (2.417 - 2.419) and exceptional fire.

It is also worth noting that champagne diamonds are completely untreated. The brown and golden hues of champagne diamonds are produced entirely by nature, in contrast to more vivid diamond colors produced by irradiation or high pressure/high temperature treatment.