The Story of Champagne

by Nicholas Faith

  The CIVC was also behind the major effort to prepare the region for the problems of today – and tomorrow – through its ‘Project 2030’. A report was prepared by a group of consultants covering every aspect of the production and marketing of the wine in the face of mounting world-wide competition and although a change of staff at the CIVC has rather stalled its implementation the improvements it suggested – like increasing the minimum time of ageing to eighteen months and of increasing the period between degorgement and sales, and the reduction of sales sur lattes – now reckoned to be well below 10 per cent of the total – are being introduced bit by bit in a region which remains a unique community.

  WELCOME TO CHAMPAGNELAND

  Since 1945 Parisians – and Belgians – have made day-trips to the region to buy wine from their favourite producer. Nevertheless, as Terence Kennedy, the export director of Drappier puts it: ‘You would be surprised how few tourists venture east out of Paris to visit Champagne, which is only a hour away.’ Historically, as Michel Drappier puts it: ‘Champagne as a whole has never been open to tourism and it is still not a priority’.

  Many serious houses still eschew the ‘theatre of champagne’, encouraging only professional visitors, buyers and journalists. This is not only because they do not have the resources to compete with the shows being put on by Moët, Pommery and the like. Bollinger and Krug, like London clubs, do not even have a brass plate indicating their existence. The name Roederer is so small it’s almost invisible, while at Deutz you have to ring a bell as though you were going into a presbytery – behind the typically austere exterior lies a perfectly preserved domestic interior dating from 1850 and much used by film companies. The layout of all the offices remains spartan and old-fashioned.

  One of the major results of the UNESCO recognition of the region will almost certainly be a considerable increase in the number of tourists. Some firms have made significant recent efforts, often at considerable expense, to encourage visitors. As so often in the industry’s history Moët has taken the lead with a complete revamp of its facilities – even installing an elevator. Lanson has recently opened up to tourists with a tour which includes a visit to the Clos Lanson, the firm’s vineyard within Reims; Canard Duchene has allowed for the needs of tourists when renovating its premises; Drappier runs daily tours of the cellars which are certainly worth a visit, for they date back to the thirteenth century; and Château Thierry Pannier has greatly improved access to its medieval cellars now that the American government is opening a visitor centre to recognize the key role the town played in the campaign on the Western front by American troops in World War I.

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  48The habit of naming brands after local heroes is not confined to the cooperatives. Until recently Mumm’s prestige brand was called Rene Lalou.

  PART 2

  THE WINE

  9

  THE VINEYARD

  It is extraordinary enough that only one small area in north-eastern France, on the northern edge of Europe’s winegrowing regions, should be capable of producing the finest sparkling wine in the world but this is compounded by a first, or even second look at the detailed map of Champagne. This induces puzzlement that such a higgledy-piggledy collection of vineyards, covering over 30,000 hectares, apparently consisting of thousands of mere blotches scattered across hundreds of kilometres of north-eastern France, could be thought of as producing a single, relatively homogenous wine. I describe the region as extending from Disneyland, on the eastern outskirts of Paris, to far-off – culturally as well as geographically – Colombey-les Deux Eglises, de Gaulle’s home a few kilometres north of the Côte d’Or, source of the wines of Burgundy. It’s not a vast vineyard, at 34,000 hectares it is a mere third of that in Bordeaux, but the vines comprise 280,000 separate sites. With a few exceptions the vines are distributed between three departments, with 23,000 in their historic homeland the Marne, 3,300 to the west in the Aisne and nearly 8,000 in the Aube well to the south of the other two.

  A closer examination reveals that most of the ‘blotches’ consist of slopes above rivers like the Marne, the Vesle, the Aube and the Seine, well-rounded hills topped by the woods characteristic of Champagne which provide shelter from the west winds.

  CHAMPAGNE’S TELL-TALE GEOLOGY

  To understand what could be described as the ‘Champagne phenomenon’ the best starting point, oddly enough, is to approach Champagne from Britain. This particular viewpoint helps to explain the – relative – geological uniqueness and uniformity of the hundreds of thousands of parcels of vines scattered over more than three thousand communes. As you drive south away from the flatlands behind the Channel ports the country grows gradually more undulating, the hills more noticeable.

  The landscape begins to resemble what the Romans called campagna. This is a term originally used to describe the rolling open chalky landscape just north of Rome, but the name soon became generic, and has been used to describe any region resembling the original model. It was thus applied – somewhat generously – to a whole province of north-eastern France, which included densely wooded hilltops and what were then barren chalky plains – the Champagne Pouilleuse east of Reims – as well as true ‘campagna’. Chalk is an excellent basis for growing grapes. It provides a ‘water reservoir’ capable of retaining 300–400 litres of water per square metre, ensuring that even in years of extreme heat like 2003 the vines remained a green oasis in a desert of otherwise parched vegetation.

  In the early Middle Ages the province was ruled by the proudly independent Comtes de Champagne, but once the earldom had been absorbed into France the definition was gradually whittled down. Even under France’s latest administrative structure, the Champagne-Ardennes region is far wider than the winegrowing area. Until January 2016 it covered four departments, Ardennes, Marne, Aube and Haute-Marne, although the historic region has now been replaced by a much wider ‘super-region’ which also includes Alsace and Lorraine. But old beliefs remain. Many locals think of the Ardennois as ‘almost Belgian’, while the inhabitants of the far south of the Aube are, effectively, Burgundian. Outsiders more concerned with the drink than with French administrative practice use the word in a narrower sense to describe merely the winegrowing region – what the French would describe as la Champagne viticole.

  The distance between the Channel ports and ‘Champagne’ is short enough for the driver not to forget the chalk cliffs which line the Straits of Dover. These are merely part of the great circle of chalk surrounding the Channel, a single geological region. This includes a semi-circle in northern France which the French call the bassin parisien – the Paris basin. Behind the twin towers of Reims Cathedral loom slopes rather steeper than any seen since Calais, leading up to the wooded heights of the appropriately named Montagne de Reims. The montagne, in reality merely a decent-sized hill, is the highest barrier the Atlantic winds have encountered on their journey across northern France. The barrier protects the Champagne viticole from the west, while the Atlantic breezes provide the area with a balanced climate, less extreme and ‘Continental’ than that found only 130 kilometres away in the Aube, the other area allowed to grow grapes for champagne. ‘The vine needs shelter,’ say the locals, ‘for it is a Mediterranean plant.’

  July, the middle of the growing season, is the wettest month in the Champenois year, with an average of a couple of inches of rain. The dangers brought by summer rain, above all the rot it can so easily produce, explain why none of the best vineyards in the Champagne region face west. Quite a few face south or south-east and some, in theory anyway, face north though a closer look shows that they are simply flat. East is far and away the best aspect for vines, which like to catch the sun as early as possible but can afford to rely on the heat reflected from the warm chalky soil in the summer evenings. The west-facing slopes are not only wetter, they are also going to suffer from cold rains during the growing season – an infinitely more important consideration than the exact conditions during the winter when the vines are
dormant. So, in general, vines are confined to south, east and even apparently north-facing slopes, although, as Georges Chappaz has pointed out, ‘it would be dangerous to generalize about the factors which make for the quality of our great wines.’49

  This is one of the most northerly vineyards in the world and, historically, the most northerly capable of producing fine black grapes. A sign of the latitude is that the vines remain dormant, brown and black, until surprisingly late in the year. In its regularity and tidiness, the montagne strikingly resembles a child’s farm set. Most of the valley floor is covered with wheat, or with pasture, dotted with cows as immobile as wooden animals. The vines march up the slopes in neat rows grouped in regular rectangular patches. Until recently, when climate change started to affect the region, the northerliness made grape-growing a precarious operation. But it also brings its own reward: any fruit grown near the edge of its climatic limit seems to concentrate its essential qualities far more effectively than its equivalent grown where the conditions are too easy, and which result in fruit with an undesirably hollow lushness. The rule applies to the olives of Provence, to oranges from parts of Spain, to Scottish raspberries, English apples – and the wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne. But if the climate is marginal, then the wine has to be very special to survive. And that depends on the local geology and topography.

  On the montagne the continuing existence of the vines shows that they have their roots in a very special type of soil. The whole crescent of chalk on the south coast of England in Dorset from Portland Bill – and Kimmeridge Bay, home to the rather harder, tougher chalks the Champenois describe as ‘Portlandien’ and ‘Kimmeridgien’ – round to the chalk cliffs of Dover and south to Reims forms part of the same geological formation. The deposits – not only chalky, but sometimes rich loamy clay – were left behind when the sea receded 70 million years ago.

  But the heart of the Champagne region derives from a subsequent series of geological accidents. Some 30 million years ago the whole region was shaken by a series of gigantic earthquakes, churning up the chalk and creating an environment composed partly of chalk fragments, partly of rich minerals dredged up by the earthquakes from the bowels of the earth. The ridge of hills which form the historic heart of the Champagne viticole, known as the ‘falaises de Champagne’ – the cliffs of Champagne – were formed by yet another earthquake a mere 11 million years ago, during what geologists call the Tertiary era. These earthquakes produced two separate hills: the Montagne de Reims and a ridge to the south of Epernay, and the valley of the Marne. Originally these slopes were pure chalk, but chalk of a special type. In Patrick Forbes’ words:

  The sediment left behind by the sea as it retreated from the Paris Basin is composed of marine organisms such as sponges, sea-urchins, sea-mosses, rhabolithes and cocolithes, and of minerals such as quartz, rutile, zircon, and tourmalin; and the presence in the chalk, to a greater or lesser degree, of these constituents determines its type. Now it so happened that most of the top layer of chalk found on the Falaises is of a type known as Belimnita quadrata, which is markedly different from the micraster chalk found on the plain below.50

  The old idea that Belimnita quadrata is the essential factor in Champagne’s geological make-up has received something of a battering from some modern geologists. They point out that belimnita is not the only type of chalk to contain the remains of these organisms – which are, indeed, the foundation of chalk throughout the world – and that there is little or no difference in physical or chemical composition between the Quadrata and Micraster chalk also found on the falaises. Yet Belimnita is more welcoming for the roots of the vines, better able to provide the balance of porosity and water retention which underlie the quality of all great wines. Whatever some geologists may say, only slopes which combine Belimnita quadrata and the loose chalky rubble which the geologists call ‘tertiary debris’ can produce grapes with champagne’s inimitable flavour. If this were not enough of a miracle, the same geological conditions, albeit with different aspects, can produce fine white as well as fine black grapes.

  As always, the best grapes are grown on the slopes, and – as in Burgundy – on the middle section, for there is a danger of frost on the lower slopes and of winds on the upper sections nearer the woods. It is more difficult to pinpoint the altitude of the best slopes. The viticulturalist Georges Chappaz who did so much to help the Champenois when replanting after the phylloxera, gave the range as between 300 and 450 feet. The exact height matters much less than the position within the slope. But below four hundred feet there is a greater danger of spring frosts, and grapes planted too close to the top of the hills suffer from unpredictable gusts of cold air.

  Whatever the slope, grapes ought to be confined to the Belimnita quadrata. Historically their culture was also restricted because the chalk was often so pure that nothing else would grow. So vines were cultivated only on slopes close to sources of good earth which could be transported economically by horse (or oxen) and cart. For one of the most obvious, but still surprising, sights in the region is to come across a cliff-face of pure chalk and to see vines perched above, their roots piercing through a layer of top-soil not more than a few inches thick. The transport of this layer is merely the first of the many labour-intensive operations behind each bottle.

  At the top of the slopes, hidden by the woods, are another secret of Champagne’s success, the famous cendres noirs. Each village exploited a quarry of the precious stuff. Under up to thirty feet of sand and ‘tertiary’ rubbish lies a layer of crumbly, peaty lignite. This richly composted humus is all that remains of the age-old forests that once covered the plateau – you can still see and feel the residual woodiness of the original material. The cendres noirs were used as a general, all-purpose fertilizer, although they now have a specialized use, as a sovereign preventative medicine against ‘chlorose’ – chlorosis or ‘green sickness’. On lightly affected vines the leaves turn yellow, while the sicker ones simply die. Chlorosis, due largely to the lack of minerals, became an even more acute problem in the early twentieth century when the vineyard was replanted with grafted plants which were far more susceptible to the disease.

  CLIMATE CHANGE: GOOD, BAD – OR BOTH

  Everyone in the region is acutely conscious of the effects of climate change. In theory this could be disastrous for producers who for four hundred years have depended on a specific balance between acidity and sugar and so worry that this could be upset. In reality, as we see in Chapter 11, so far the effects have been relatively positive. In the past the winters could be very cold. Snow was a regular feature, but less worrying than really acute frosts, for vines cannot easily tolerate temperatures below -25°C. These are infrequent – although the terrible winter of 1984–5 destroyed perhaps a tenth of the vines in the region.51 More frequent were the late frosts which are the nightmare of growers of any fruit in a northern climate. Indeed, it is the frequency of these frosts – well into April, occasionally into May – which, to a great extent, dictated the pattern of planting in the region. The early budding white Chardonnay suffered the worst: the late-budding Pinot Meunier the least.

  Historically, the summers have been nothing to write home about. Temperatures are markedly below those found in other northerly, but more ‘Continental’ vineyards like those in Alsace and on the Rhine; and the sunshine, a mere 1,500 hours during the growing season between May and October, is 250 hours less than 160 kilometres further south in Burgundy, itself a marginal winemaking region in many summers. So, even on the most optimistic reckoning, in the past, grapes grown in the Champagne viticole used to have a potential of only 10.5 degrees of alcohol, a mere 0.5 per cent above the minimum required for a proper vineyard. ‘In good years,’ said André Lallier of Deutz, ‘we produced black and white grapes, in bad years they were red and green.’

  Lallier here pinpoints the very narrow line in Champagne between success and failure, for the region is unique not because it can produce great or even very good still wines –
it can’t – but because it can produce wines rich in both sugar and acid which are thus uniquely suitable for transformation into sparkling wines that will retain the bite, the freshness, the fruitiness, of grapes grown in cold climates. Fatter wines not as full of both sugar and acid simply do not retain their qualities after undergoing the rigours of the transformation process.

  But some definitions can be attempted. The classic Champagne viticole comprised three zones. To the north were the vineyards behind Reims. Round the montagne were other vineyards facing east and south which extended from Villers-Marmery at the eastern edge and curled round the slopes until they merged with the vineyard above the Marne valley. This extended west until the slopes gradually became less chalky west of Epernay. Opposite the south-east of the Montagne lies the Côte des Blancs, the long, gradual, east facing slope extending south to Vertus. While originally most of the region was planted with black grapes, the locals have found that the white Chardonnay grows best on purely east-facing slopes, not only on the Côte des Blancs, but also at Villers-Marmery.

  The few pockets of purely south-facing vines – the village of Bouzy, much of Cramant and some of Aÿ, for example – produce some of Champagne’s ripest and most-prized grapes. But there has always been something of a puzzle in the quality of the grapes from some of the villages (notably Chigny-les-Roses and Mailly-Champagne) which seemingly face due north. Elaborate theories have been evolved, involving warm air off the montagne swirling round the vines. On the ground things look rather different. Most of the apparently north-facing vines are on the lower slopes, in open country which really doesn’t face in any particular direction, while most of the others are on eastern-facing sub-slopes. Indeed, as one can see from the map on page viii, there is a noticeable gap in the vines due south of Reims, where the vines would face north – or west.