But the historic roots of the vineyard, and still producing the best grapes, are in three regions: the upper valley of the Marne centred on Aÿ, the northern and eastern slopes of the Montagne de Reims and the Côte des Blancs running south of Epernay.
Of course, Champagne’s vines now extend well beyond its original boundaries. Although at first glance the familiar map seems to be a meaningless patchwork, if overlaid on a geographical and geological map it gains an internal logic. Over the past hundred and fifty years the growers have expanded from their original bases, searching out well-drained slopes overlooking any of the rivers in the region, the Ardre and the Vesle to the north, and the Cubry to the south, as well as the smaller streams feeding the Marne itself.
There have always been vines north and west of Reims – as early as the seventeenth century one particular patch owned by the monks at St Thierry, north-west of Reims, was reckoned to be fully the equal of anything on the montagne. It was also natural to cultivate la petite montagne, its western extension. It seemed equally natural for the vines to spread west along the Marne valley. For hundreds of years there have been vineyards along the valley of the Marne right up to the outskirts of Paris. During the nineteenth century they turned to growing grapes to make champagne, so the vineyards now extend west beyond Chateau-Thierry, 50 kilometres west of Epernay, to within 60 kilometres of the capital, into zones in which the chalk is thoroughly mixed with sand and clay. No truly great wines are produced west of Epernay and the quality deteriorates steadily beyond Dormans, just 40 kilometres west of Epernay. As the valley narrows, the climate gets wetter, few of the slopes face east, and the soil grows steadily less chalky.
Yet once you move along the Marne west of Epernay there is some fine Pinot Meunier, above all on the north bank as far as Chateu Thierry. Even futher west, within 30 kilometres of Disneyland there’s a sunny bowl of much-appreciated vines at Charly.
Further south, the Côte de Sézanne is separated from the Côte des Blancs by the broad marshes of the Marais de St Gond and at first sight seem to offer less opportunity for growing grapes than the valley of the Marne. The opposite is the case. The slopes are still chalky, the aspect is still eastern, the grapes, therefore, much nearer the quality of their ‘home’ area than those of the Marne.
There are many other sub-sub-regions like the Sezannais to the south, a sort of annexe to the Côte des Blancs.
The major exception to the idea of the modern map of Champagne as a natural extension of the heartland of la Champagne viticole lies in the 8,000 hectares, nearly a quarter of the total, planted in the Aube, 112 kilometres south-east of Epernay. In fact there are two separate vineyards, one on the Aube, the other, in the Barséquanais, is a complex mix of slopes above three rivers, the Seine, the Laignes and the Ource. But both the sub-regions are similar in being grown on slopes far steeper than in the Marne, enjoying a climate with colder winters and sunnier summers and in producing mostly Pinot Noir – partly because it buds later and the Aube is colder in winter. It is in every way a totally separate entity, geologically, geographically and viticulturally, and closer to Burgundy than to Champagne though, since the Chardonnay and the Pinot Noir are common to both regions, there is no reason why fine sparkling wines should not be made in the Aube where the chalk is largely Kimmerridgian. As we saw in Chapter 6, the principal reason why they are entitled to call themselves ‘champagne’ is historical. But geographically, it would be equally logical for the Chardonnay grapes grown in Chablis, a few kilometres south-east of the Aube vineyard, to be used for champagne. Moreover, the geology of the Aube vineyard is that of Chablis rather than of Champagne proper. The worst problem is late frosts – the sharpest was probably the nine degrees of frost recorded at the end of May in 1961 and at the end of April in 1985 – a final blow after a terrible winter. But because it is closer to Chablis than to Epernay there can be a certain minerality in the wines.
As we saw in Chapter 6, historically the wines, or to be more precise, the grapes from the Aube were officially reckoned to be worth a mere 50 per cent of those from the finest crus, a miserable rate shared with those from the Aisne and the western valley of the Marne. Today there’s a much freer market, though grapes from the top crus still attract a premium, receiving up to €7 a kilo as against a normal price of slightly less than €6.
CLASSIFICATIONS OVER THE CENTURIES
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, authors, merchants and journalists were reporting on how the Champenois divided the – then much smaller and more concentrated – vineyard into five or six categories. But these related to the qualities of their still wines, not their suitability for sparkling wines. This division hung over the first proper classification made in 1920 as a result of the system of appellation d’origine contrôlée described in Chapter 6. Otherwise the classification was perfectly logical. Only the grapes from a handful of villages on the Montagne de Reims, in the Grande Vallee de la Marne round Epernay, and on the Côte des Blancs, were paid at the top rate. Below that, the original classification was very severe.
These distinctions have narrowed recently, but they have important historical roots. As the vineyard spread, so the grapes from the crus, the nearly two hundred villages within the Champagne region, were graded, more or less informally, for commercial purposes. After 1945 the CIVC got into the act, classing a relative handful of fifty-seven communes either as grands crus or as premier crus. The distinction is crucial: only the grands crus received the full 100 per cent of the price agreed annually by the merchants and growers. The premier crus received between 90 and 100 per cent. Most of the others received between 81 and 90 per cent but those from much of the ‘outer circle’ were rated at between 55 and 75 per cent. As we saw in Chapter 8, in the last forty years the power of the growers and improved viticultural practices narrowed the original differentials. Obviously, however, the chefs de caves distinguish clearly between the handful of truly individual crus and the many others – including most of the premier crus – which lack any special qualities.
The importance of the distinctions expressed in these percentage figures varied between vintages. In a good year the grapes from lesser vineyards come into their own. Better a wine from an 85 per cent vineyard in a good year than one from a premier cru in a bad year. ‘In truly great years,’ said Robert-Jean de Vogüé, ‘there are no grands crus.’ But, as Michel Budin of Perrier-Jouët pointed out: ‘in lesser years the grands crus are still capable of producing fine wines’.
Over the years the gulf between grand and premier cru became more shallow. In 1985, for the first time since the war, five communes were elevated to grand cru status, although for most of them the elevation was pretty minimal, from 98 to 100 per cent. At the same time, a number of communes, some of them pretty obscure, on la petite montagne, south-west of Reims, were promoted to premier cru status. Some of these promotions produced pretty startling results. When Lallier of Deutz told me immediately after the elevation that his father would never have regarded Chouilly, newly promoted in 1985, as a grand cru, he was basing his judgment on the fact that it was worth only eighty-six per cent until it was revalued in 1945.
The firms selling luxury champagnes used to make great play with the average percentage figures for the grapes in their wines – though, this particular form of snobbery, like those involving wines from the Aube and the use of the Pinot Meunier always involved taking three separate pinches of salt. There is, for instance, a world of difference between a wine made from the handful of crus which have been acknowledged as great since the origins of sparkling champagne, and one made from the marginal crus which as late as 1944 were worth only four-fifths of the finest crus – only a generation ago some of them were so obscure that they weren’t even listed as separate villages.
In 1985 the classification was loosened up, largely, one suspects, because of pressure from the growers. Many of the laggards among the premiers crus were upgraded, Biseuil by fifteen points to ninety five while five villages war
e promoted to 100 points – including Chouilly which forty years earlier had been awarded a mere eighty-three points. In any case – and similar to my feelings about the up-to-100 ratings awarded to wines by the influential critic Robert Parker – it seems to me ridiculous to try and distinguish between wines like, say, Verzy, at ninety-eight points and the 100 pointers.
To complicate matters further, the crus are villages, parishes, their boundaries administrative ones which do not necessarily conform to geographical and geological realities. Aÿ is the classic case since not only is it one of the biggest communes with over 300 hectares of vines, but the vines are on a number of slopes facing in all directions – including west. But the most extreme example of different soils within a single commune is Tours-sur-Marne, a small riverside town surrounded by fields of waving grain and their attendant silos. The extreme eastern corner of the parish consists of slopes which are simply an extension of the famous vines of Bouzy – as are the few acres theoretically in Louvois. The same distortion can be seen in the grapes bearing the historic name of Sillery, the product of land near the flattest, and therefore the least distinguished, vineyards of its neighbour Verzenay. Equally, within Chouilly only the vines near Moët’s Chateau de Saran, and the border with Cramant, are fully worthy of their neighbour and its 100 per cent rating. The same lack of homogeneity applies within large individual crus, like Ambonnay. Even within Bouzy, supposedly a totally superior commune, there are lower slopes whose grapes the locals reckon unworthy of a proud name which, after all, covers over 400 hectares of vines. And although the appellation is confined to vineyards which have produced grapes in the past, these included some pretty mediocre plots, cultivated perhaps because they were close to the village, perhaps because the owner was a keen viticulturalist, perhaps because any wine bearing a certain name was in demand at one time or another.
In 2010 the INAO waded into the battle. For reasons inexplicable to an outsider it suppressed any reference to precise percentages but allowed the seventeen grands crus and the forty-two premiers crus to continue to enjoy their titles and even tidied up the ridiculous situation in which the black grapes from Tours-sur-Marne and the white grapes from Chouilly were classed as grands while the grapes of the other colour were merely premiers. Now they’re all grands!
It did not help that the gap between the lowest rate and the best grapes had narrowed so drastically. In 1971 the minimum was raised from 70 to 77 per cent, in 1980 to 78 per cent, and to 80 per cent a year later – even so there is pressure to narrow the differentials even further. A further, albeit small, disguised price increase came in 1983 when six communes were upgraded to 100 per cent grands crus and seven others to premier cru status. In 1980, during the worst of the shortage, merchants agreed a supplementary payment of F10 a kilo, bringing the price in a 100 per cent cru to five or six times the top price for the finest table grapes. There was a further bonus from an 8 per cent tax on their purchases of grapes or wines paid to the CIVC by the merchants, the proceeds from which were shared out among the growers who had signed the contract.
This was only half the total, and even then they can alter the proportion of their production they offer by up to 15 per cent halfway through the contract. A recent study has found that those who sold their whole production through the contract tended to be pensioners and part-time growers, and that the CIVC’s keenest theoretical supporters were in fact those who relied on the contract only partially or, indeed not at all, but looked on it as a form of insurance policy.
THE GREENING OF CHAMPAGNE
In the past thirty years the whole vineyard has responded to a fundamental question: was Champagne green enough? The answer was a clear negative, and the Champenois have responded by working to transform the vineyard from being one of the least environmentally conscious in the world to being one of the greenest.
Champagne’s environmental problems lay deep, in the soil itself. Many classic vineyards have preferred, for reasons of quality, to keep their vines lean and hungry and not overproductive, but Champagne’s soils are naturally very poor and the lower pre-war yields had a lot to do with the almost total absence of fertilizer use. Fertilizer was expensive, and the growers had relied entirely on the organic matter supplied by the horses once used in the vineyards. As the demand for greater yields grew, more fertilizer was required. In turn this attracted insects, as well as promoting rot and fungus. These problems, in turn, necessitated hefty doses of herbicides and fungicides. The soil lacked manganese and as a result red and yellow spiders flourished, and weeds and rot became impervious to treatments. As is now increasingly realized, modern chemical solutions to age-old problems have a nasty tendency to be impermanent. For a few years the Champenois thought that modern anti-rot sprays would provide a solution. Unfortunately, they applied the sprays with such vigour for three consecutive years that they became utterly ineffective,
In 1984 a Charter of Quality emerged from one of the CIVC’s numerous committees – in a report probably instigated by Jean-Claude Rouzaud of Roederer, a stickler for quality in every aspect of the production of champagne. The result was a programme of viticulture raisonée – literally ‘well thought-out viticulture’ but in reality ‘environmentally sound’. When I first visited the region to discuss the project I was cynical, assuming that the programme would be full of empty gestures but would not attack the fundamental problems. I was unfair to the determination of the Champenois community to go truly green in what one official told me was ‘the most controlled vineyard in France and therefore in the world.’
The programme started with a detailed analysis of every parcel of vines – all 258,000 of them – and the modelling of the climate of each year’s vintage, followed by a systematic series of measures. Biological pest control was introduced, allowing the quantity of pesticides used to be halved in the course of fifteen years. There was a substantial reduction in the use of chemical fertilizers which were replaced by smaller doses of natural fertilizer. The practice of burning tyres to help protect the vines from spring frosts was abandoned and replaced by the use of heated electric wires. The result is not only a cleaner vineyard but also the return of such useful insects as earthworms. €95 million was spent on stopping soil erosion and a further €80 million since 2000 on the treatment of waste water. The use of lighter bottles and less elaborate packaging reduce the carbon impact at the packaging and transport end of the production cycle. Overall, the region’s carbon footprint has been greatly reduced and 120,000 tons of biomass have been produced. Every grower receives annual recommendations, some guidance in dark blue, those from the CIVC in red and the legal requirements in an umistakable green. The result, says Dominique Moncomble of the CIVC is ‘much riper grapes – with half as much manure’.
MORE VINES?
The definition of the vineyard when the appellation was granted in 1927 had been based on the opinions of locals, who had provided the lists at a time when horses were the only transport available, and so parcels of land too far from villages tended to be excluded.
THE LUCKY SEVENTEEN GRANDS CRUS
Côte des Blancs
Avize
Chouilly
Cramant
Le Mesnil-sur-Oger
Oger
Oiry
Grande Vallee de la Marne
Aÿ
Montagne de Reims
Ambonnay
Beaumont-Sur-Vesle
Bouzy
Louvois
Mailly-Champagne
Puisieulx
Sillery
Tours-Sur-Marne
Verzenay
Verzy
In addition, there were some farcical anomalies – one overambitious mayor even included the local graveyard within the appellation. Absentee landowners often found that their slopes had not been registered. Some of the many bloody-minded landowners inevitably found in any survey of rural France preferred to keep the slopes for shooting, or as pasture, attitudes reinforced by the unprofitability of grapes
at the time. One doctor at Ambonnay wouldn’t allow vines on four of the finest hectares in the commune. In addition, there were stretches of chalk east of the Côte des Blancs which were simply too far from sources of good soil to be economically cultivable at the time – although today the additional value would more than compensate for the expense of bringing in soil to cover the chalk.
Moreover, so miserable was the prospect for the growers in the late 1920s that a number of communes with suitable soils did not bother to apply. One of the most obvious absentees was Fontaine sur Aÿ, a hilly village tucked away between Avenay and Bouzy on the south-east slopes of the Montagne de Reims, on the face of it premium growing land. Not surprisingly, when the price of grapes soared in the 1980s the local council had applied for the status of appellation. Permission was finally granted by the Conseil d’Etat, France’s supreme administrative court, in 1992.
Another 600 hectares of growing land or more have been absorbed by the region’s growing towns and other results of increasing urbanization – 33 prize hectares were covered with tarmac simply to build a new road bypassing Champillon on the slopes above Epernay on the way to Reims.
But for a long time the subject of extending the appellation was virtually unmentionable. Claude Taittinger pointed out: ‘politically there would be a revolution if one peasant became a multi-millionaire because his land were classified, while his neighbour’s land alongside it were not.’ In the 1980s, a shortage of grapes – albeit one which turned out to be temporary – created what seems now to be a panic rather than a crisis. The worry resulted in increasing pressure to allow the appellation to be extended, to allow more vineyards to be allowed to claim the precious name. The possibility also appealed to aspiring young would-be winemakers – previously the growers had shied away from a policy that would have brought in new supplies of grapes and probably reduced the price. With prices of €800,000 per hectare only a hundred or so are traded every year, many to outsiders looking for a long-term financial investment. Additional planting rights had been based broadly on whether vines had been grown on land in the past and whether the commune involved had been included in the 1927 appellation.
The Story of Champagne Page 20