The Syndicat’s longest-running battles, however, were on the home front. The Normans were one obvious problem, selling their sparkling ciders as Champagne Normand or Champagne du Calvados. The well-established merchants of Saumur, long used to calling their products ‘vins de champagne’, were even worse. They were helped by mavericks, like M. Maumène, a professor who wrote a book in which he described champagne as un produit fabriqué, an industrial product, a term which the Saumurois (and the public health authorities in Paris) used to prove that it was the process, not its geographical origins, which constituted its uniqueness.
The Saumurois were even supported by a local court which decided that the name of Champagne had ‘fallen into the public domain’. ‘The Court’, noted the Syndicat sourly, ‘has succumbed to the influence of its environment.’ In 1889 the Cour de Cassation, France’s highest tribunal, finally ruled in favour of the Champenois. But the Saumurois persisted. In England Ackerman-Laurance sold a ‘Dry Royal Saumur Champagne’, claiming that they had no control over the actions of their agent there. The Gilbeys, major sellers of their products in Britain, stated in their price lists that ‘champagne is produced in several departments of France including the Loire and the Jura’. Despite the judgments, the local Chamber of Commerce claimed that the 1824 law did not apply to so general a category as sparkling wines. Until the law provided proper protection the Syndicat had to fight every time there was an infringement. The 1824 law helped only when place names were used, it could not be invoked to protect the good name of champagne itself.
Despite numerous earlier efforts, the first law to reach the statute books was that of 1905, which is usually described as providing a solid foundation for the protection of French appellations d’origine. But that was not how it seemed at the time, not to the Champenois anyway. In the event, the law triggered off the second stage of a war which had started in the early 1890s and ended only in 1927 when an enlarged ‘champagne’ finally received the full protection of the French law. By attempting the first legal definition of where champagne could be made, at a time when supplies from the Marne were greatly restricted by phylloxera, the authorities almost invited trouble.
In the early years of the twentieth century it seemed that the merchants and the vignerons had belatedly got together again to face one major problem, that of unfair competition from producers of sparkling wines in other regions of France – or other countries for that matter.31 ‘Our repeated complaints against the usurpation of the name of Champagne... have finally found an echo among the growers,’ said Paul Krug in his 1904 annual report to the Syndicat. The same year the vignerons founded their own Federation.
Vignerons and Syndicat alike were deeply disappointed by the final shape of the regulations resulting from the 1905 law. A last-minute piece of sabotage even removed Article 11 which defined ‘vins mousseux’ as wines whose second fermentation had occurred in the bottle – as opposed to the giant vats used for lesser sparkling wines. The growers, together with a majority of the Syndicat (although some of the members objected) was looking for ‘a receipt of a special colour for the wines of the region; separate warehouses (that is to say a ban on storing in the same building wines from Champagne and from other regions); the opening of a special ledger for the workers’ entitlement, obligatory mention of the word “champagne” on the labels, the corks and the crates containing our wine.’
YET ANOTHER SCOURGE
The arguments were greatly exacerbated by the ravages caused by the phylloxera louse. This was a late arrival in Champagne. It had already devastated most of France’s other major vineyards when the first signs, the shrivelled vines, appeared in 1890 at Treloup in the Aisne a few hundred yards west of the border of the department of the Marne. Moët & Chandon immediately bought the affected plot and burnt the vines. The Champenois should have been well prepared for the battle and to have accepted that the elaborate chemical methods used elsewhere, especially the injection of potassium sulfo-carbonate into the roots, had only a temporary delaying effect in preventing the spread of the pest. Nevertheless, an influential school of thought strongly objected to the procedure established elsewhere – rooting up the affected vines and replanting with French vines grafted onto disease-resistant American rootstock. Nevertheless, phylloxera was one of the elements which forced less scrupulous merchants to look for wines from outside the Champagne region.
The reasons for the growers’ hesitation were obvious. Despite the success of grafted vines in Cognac, another vineyard based on chalky soils, many Champenois were still doubtful whether grafted vines would flourish in soils as chalky as those of the Marne. In 1889 Gaston Chandon de Briailles, a leading grower as well as a major merchant, had expressed his fear that American rootstocks could bring phylloxera with them. And the growers realized that if they replanted they would have to buy new vines for the first time ever – until then vines had been grown en foule, in great clumps, and new plants were propagated simply by bending the shoots into the ground and letting them take root near the mother vine. This provided the first opportunity to select the vines being planted
The growers were in no state to cope with any additional expense. Most of them could not live exclusively off their vines – the 25,000 growers in the Marne in 1896 owned an average of only about half a hectare of vines apiece. Production costs had more than doubled in the previous fifty years. So had the wages of the many labourers needed to tend the vines, for planting en foule meant there were up to 10,000 vines on every hectare. Prices varied so enormously from year to year that vines were profitable only in good years. Yet the growers had become overconfident since the demand seemed to rise so inexorably. Roche remarked how ‘the villages are more charming than anywhere else in France, the dwellings more luxurious; and public buildings, street and squares are better kept, which gives even the least important centres the appearance of a small bourgeois town, whose inhabitants are proud of displaying their wealth.’
By the time the phylloxera louse arrived the normally prudent Champenois had overstretched themselves and the plague led to an appalling wave of indebtedness. The growers simply could not face the additional costs (and the five-year break in income) involved in replanting. This doomed the efforts of the ‘Grand Syndicat Antiphylloxerique de la Marne’ formed in 1892 to combat the plague, bringing together the Syndicats (whose members subscribed over F250,000) and a majority of the growers, with the backing of the local and national authorities. Trouble erupted when the commission chosen to supervise the elimination of infected vines started work. The growers immediately thought it was all a scare got up by greedy merchants and refused to pay the levies required. They even wanted to expel merchants who did not buy in the region.
Four years later the Syndicat de Défense ‘passed away in a pitiable fashion, following the annual general meeting in Epernay on the 5th July 1896’. So the merchants went it alone through the Association Viticole Champenoise. This was attacked, not so much because it was composed exclusively of merchants, but because of the fear that it would encourage replanting and thus, it was feared, a reduction in quality. In vain the AVC quoted its expressed intention to ‘retain Champagne’s native vines as long as possible’ and to give subsidies only to ‘growers’ groups or local associations working with the same objectives as the Association’, and to make sure that those growers who did replant bought their new vines from the best of the many (and sometimes unscrupulous) nurserymen who were preying on them. In vain. Suspicion of the new grafted plants was so great that Alfred Werlé of Clicquot and Gaston Chandon de Briailles both resigned from the Syndicat – and when the commission was eventually reformed the latter served as a grower’s representative. He went further. His firm set up a pioneering research station in Epernay, called Fort Chabrol, which provided the growers with a reliable supply of grafted vines. The merchants had often helped the growers – the members of the Syndicat had financed the machines (pulverisateurs) required to spray the vines with copper sulphate mixture (bou
illie bordelaise) when the mildew struck the region in the early 1880s. Nevertheless, relations between the two sides were generally antagonistic.
THE ROAD TO CIVIL WAR
In the fifteen years before the 1905 law phylloxera had already created a dangerous state of tension between growers and merchants – many of whom had taken to importing wines from all over France to fill the gaps it had left. These traumas, aggravated by a series of bad harvests, led to a climax which in retrospect seems inevitable: in 1911 a series of riots erupted in Aÿ. In hindsight it is not they which seem unnatural, but the fact that a new and lasting peace was forged so quickly afterwards – a tribute to the majority of the merchants whose interests (and often, whose sympathies) coincided with those of the growers.
The merchants were in a cleft stick. Demand was rising. They admitted that they were buying wine from the vineyards round Chateau Thierry in the Aisne, which, they claimed reasonably enough, were a continuation of the vins de la Rivière (and indeed formed part of the appellation as it was legally defined in 1927). Even the Syndicat was split. For by then a substantial minority, even of the more scrupulous merchants, was being forced to use grapes from well outside the traditional regions. A leading American importer stated that ‘Champagne is the product of the old French province of that name, including the four departments, Haute-Marne, Ardennes, Aube and Marne’ – a definition which could clearly have come only from the representatives of the leading brands. For the merchants were buying wines from everywhere, not just from the Aube. One merchant in Aÿ, Ducoigny, specialized in importing these wines, and even the ultra-respectable house of Deutz was buying ‘foreign’ wines from Chablis (this was sensible enough since they were, presumably, made from Chardonnay grapes). The mass imports were a godsend to Champagne’s rivals, especially the Germans. In their publicity they emphasized the superiority of their Sekt, made only with German grapes. But foreign competition was less worrying than the inevitable clash with the increasingly indebted, increasingly desperate local growers.
In 1908 Catillard, the deputy from the Aube, claimed that the 1905 law had not given the administration the right to define appellations, that the Aube formed part of the old province of Champagne and that a lot of wines labelled ‘champagne’ included wine from the Aube. Even the Syndicat had to admit that ‘some firms do perhaps buy wine in the Aube, but these are isolated and regrettable instances’. Nor were the Champenois the only victims: ‘many of the Aube’s wines are sold under the name of Burgundy... and one part of the department of the Aube only asked to be included in the Champagne region after their claims had been repulsed by the Commission de Delimitation de la Bourgogne meeting in Beaune.’
The Syndicat placed the blame squarely and unfairly elsewhere. The reason, it said, that some merchants had strayed beyond the Marne was because there was no legal barrier to the imports and the tax authorities had refused to intervene. The Syndicat claimed that any investigation would force the merchants to break their code of professional secrecy by revealing the geographical origin of their wines. But this did not allow the Aubois to enjoy a droit acquis to call their wines champagne.
All this time the growers were getting increasingly desperate. By 1911 over 9,000 hectares of vines in the Marne had been affected by phylloxera and the cost of replanting was exacerbated by a series of bad harvests in the Marne itself which naturally increased the scale of fraudulent purchases by the merchants. Additional supplies could come only from the Aube where they had already replanted after the phylloxera. The Aubois had replanted with Gamay grapes which produced a disagreeable smoky type of sparkling wine, yet the French buyers did not mind. Then as now they were concerned more with price than with quality.
The riots which swept the region in January 1911 and devastated the little town of Aÿ were the result of a series of muddles and accidents. Nevertheless, it was entirely appropriate that this, the most dramatic single incident in the history of the wines of Champagne, should have occurred in Aÿ, the historic heart of the vineyard, the only winemaking centre where the vines overhang the cellar roofs, and you can follow the whole winemaking process in reverse – you have to climb from the street to the firms’ offices then up again to the cellars before reaching the vines which encircle the town. Its wines had always figured among Champagne’s finest – without any help from the ambitious aristocrats of Sillery or the greedy ecclesiastics of Hautvillers – and were thus natural targets for imitators. Lamarre had noted that Aÿ – ‘the base of the best cuvées’ – produced enough wine to fill 35 million bottles, but that the merchants sold 50 million bottles labelled Aÿ. Even more importantly, Aÿ exists only and purely for the wine. In Reims the cellars are confined to the eastern outskirts, and even in Epernay they are mostly concentrated on the Avenue de Champagne, and then on the outskirts of the town.
Already in September 1908, 1,500 growers had had to be restrained by their leaders from using force against the fraudsters. For the merchants, anticipating a change in the law, had brought in great quantities of wine from the Aube. In May 1909 the growers won an apparent victory when the tax authorities started to use the phrase ‘vin de Champagne’ on the transport dockets which had to accompany every load of wine. The first number of their newspaper, La Champagne Viticole, was devoted to singing the authorities’ praises. But this measure was purely theoretical unless the growers had wine to sell: and for three years they didn’t. The 1908 harvest had been poor and small. That of 1909 was spoilt by rot. Meanwhile the authorities were starting to prosecute some of the fraudulent merchants, a step which merely fanned the flames of revolt because it exposed how many there were. Then came the terrible year of 1910 in which virtually no wine at all was made anywhere in the region.
The authorities were sympathetic, in theory anyway. ‘The dignity and the attitudes of the growers combined with their profound anguish,’ wrote the sub-prefect of Epernay, ‘seem to me to deserve the sympathy and concern of the government.’ The prefect, the senior official on the spot, told the prime minister that ‘after four years of negligible harvests, a profound misery prevails. In some places, more than two-thirds of the land is mortgaged’ – to the merchants. ‘There is only one difference between the grower who owns 12 acres and one who owns only a couple of acres,’ said Michel-Lecacheur, one of the growers’ leaders, ‘one has 12 acres mortgaged, the other only 2.’
On 4 November 1910 the villages refused to pay their land taxes. Three days later a notoriously fraudulent merchant made the mistake of going to a meeting at Damery, and was lucky to escape unharmed. On 16 November three hundred vignerons at Mesnil-sur-Oger in the heart of the Côte des Blancs, exasperated by what they described as ‘frauds committed daily by two champagne merchants’, had to be calmed. In theory relief was at hand. On 7 December the government had tabled the additional measures required to meet the Champenois’ requests – including the mention of a wine’s origin on the transport docket. But as the debates continued more wine kept arriving, in anticipation of the passage of the bill. This naturally made matters worse. On 17 January 1911, 7,600 litres of wine were spilt and thousands of bottles smashed. Two leaders were arrested and questioned. The crowd prepared to liberate them by force, but they were released.
By this time the affair was assuming more than local importance. Among the crowd was a mysterious figure, one Bolo Pasha, a title, he claimed, bestowed on him by the Khedive of Egypt. His character and his career were as farcical as his name. A fraudster, a professional seducer of women, he had lately married (bigamously) the widow of a wealthy merchant in Bordeaux. At the time he was deeply involved in a curious federation ostensibly dedicated to the promotion of pure food. Yet during the crisis he was trusted by both sides and was present, an apparently emollient figure, at all the demonstrations and negotiations. His role remains totally mysterious, although it is possible that he was acting for the German merchants who were taking advantage of their French rivals’ problems. At the time the Germans were making determined efforts to
subvert their rivals, some of the growers flew German flags out of their windows – and in 1918 Bolo was shot as a German spy.
By this time troops were pouring into the area and every entrance to Epernay was guarded – for the railway station at Epernay was a key point where trouble could be expected. Most of the imported wines were unloaded there, and the growers had many friends and relatives among the railway workers. But the troops could not be everywhere and the troubles were spreading. On 20 January the prefect, Chapon, accompanied only by the mysterious Bolo, went to meet the growers at Venteuil and obtained their agreement not to indulge in any further acts of sabotage.
In return he promised to prevent any further imports of wine. The station at Epernay was jammed with a thousand casks which he tried to block. Unfortunately, one maverick merchant sued the railways to force them to transport his wine. He succeeded. By this time the war was hotting up. At Bouzy they threatened to ‘do as we did at Damery’ to three merchants: ‘X known as the Jew’, ‘Y known as Bazaine’32 and ‘Z known as the poisoner’. To avoid the problems at Epernay three merchants sent wine through Rilly – where a grower promptly emptied the casks and refilled them with kerosene.
The Story of Champagne Page 11