Revisiting Champagne

Sophie
Larmandier (Champagne Larmandier-Bernier), of Vertus in the
southern end of the Cote des Blancs, and her husband,
Pierre, have taken a biodynamic course as a way to nurse
their land back to health. Pointing down at the ground in
her vineyard, she exclaimed, “This soil is alive again.
Pierre’s father thought that herbicides were progress, but
it killed the soil. The roots that feed stay in this thin
topsoil. It must not be compacted. Instead of applying
synthetic chemicals, we prepare natural ingredients that
bring life back to the soil. We mow and plow, instead of
adding poison. During the winter, we let the grass grow in
the vineyard. It is more work, but that is our choice.”
Terroir plays an important role in the wines of
Larmandier-Bernier. They make what they call “single
terroir” Champagnes. Their voice however is a whisper within
the Champagne chorus.

Though terroir
is important in Champagne production, consumers rarely see
beyond the Champagne’s brand image, and the knowledgeable
trade rarely ventures further than a cursory knowledge of
the Champagne blend.

Champagne is
located northeast of Paris in one of the most marginal
climates imaginable for wine production. There is not enough
warmth and sunshine in the short growing season to get the
grapes to full maturity. Faced with this reality, for some
three hundred years, the Champenois, the people of
Champagne, have harvested their immature grapes, black and
white, made simple, but subtle, low alcohol white wines,
added sugar and yeast, and then harnessed the bubbles by
conducting a second fermentation in the bottle. What the
blend of first wines, the vins clairs, lacked in power,
texture and richness of flavor, the end result made up for
with the help of additional alcohol, bubbles and the flavor
and texture imparted by the second fermentation.

In order to make
a consistent, balanced product from year to year, and to
make one producer’s Champagne slightly different from that
of another, blending has been essential. The farmers of
Champagne did not create the industry of, and market for,
Champagne – businessmen did. Though many were French, many
also came from neighboring countries to the north,
principally from Germany and Holland. These foreigners
brought the seminal business know-how. They wedded the
concepts of branding, marketing and mass production to what
the peasant farmers of Champagne had made for centuries,
pale, acidic, low alcohol red, white, and rose wines made
from Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay, and other
varieties. These other varieties were eventually deemed less
suitable for Champagne production and uprooted.

Merchants
crafted the image of Champagne so as to make it appeal to
the middle and upper classes, connecting it with the
celebration of important occasions. The image of Champagne
as a celebratory drink helped obscure the understanding of
its character behind its function as a social symbol and
lubricator. The Champagne producers wanted so much to assure
the public of the style consistency of the product, that
individuality within the industry was discouraged. Until the
early 199Os, Champagne’s connection to the soil, to its
terroir, was not something that the merchants wanted to
attach their brands to. The concept of terroir was an
important concept only within the circle of those who
actually made the Champagne. They knew that, in order to
make the best Champagne possible, they had to understand the
terroirs around the many Champagne villages and to
skillfully blend the unique characteristic of their vins
clairs.

Champagne’s
19,OOO grape farmers own 88 percent of the vineyards allowed
by law to produce grapes for Champagne. According to Chantal
Gonet of Champagne Gonet, the average landholding is small,
less than 1 hectare. Most farmers are too small to make a go
of it producing and selling their own Champagne – hence they
sell their grape production to merchants and cooperatives.
Only about 5OOO grape farmers make their own Champagne and
sell it under their own name. A grower-bottler’s production
is much less than that of a typical Champagne house which
amalgamates vin clairs purchased from all over Champagne
with the vins clairs it produces from its own vineyards.
Limited volume of product, low capital and a narrow,
provincial view of the world make it difficult for these
small grower-bottlers to tap into international distribution
systems, so most of their production is sold within France
and to knowledgeable consumers who are several hours’ drive
away in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and
Switzerland. Inheritance laws that date back to Napoleonic
times have resulted in the continual division of land among
siblings. Grower-producers usually own multiple plots which
they have amalgamated within the confines of the village
where their family has lived for generations. They know
their land and their village intimately. It is these
producers, more than any other, that could most benefit by
new consumer and trade awareness of Champagne
terroir.

At first glance,
it is curious that some grower-producers who have the
potential to use the terroir trump card remain content to
keep it in the background. For example, one of the more
successful and larger grower-bottlers (25 hectares) is
Pierre Gimonnet (Champagne Pierre Gimonnet et Fils) located
in the village of Cuis. He explained: “Champagne is a
complex blend of different expressions. I am against the
mono-cuvee, the single vineyard wine. Above all, I am a
blender. I vinify parcel by parcel but I see each vin clair
as a component in a larger blend. I want a more complex and
well-balanced product.” Champagne Pierre Gimonnet will soon
shed its producer classification from that of an RM
(recoltant-manipulant), a grower-bottler, to an NM
(negociant-manipulant), a merchant-bottler. This will enable
the company to buy grapes so as to ensure volume for his
large base of customers. Champagne Gonet in Mesnil, too, is
about to make the same transition. In order to grow larger
in Champagne, it is almost impossible to buy more land or
vineyards. One must buy grapes from other growers or
cooperatives and hence give up the RM classification for the
NM one. The concept of terroir is a calling card for those
who want to or are forced to remain small. There is one
other use of the “terroir” trump card. A handful of larger
merchants make single vineyard Champagnes as a means of
enhancing their luxury image. The addition of an
ultra-expensive, limited production terroir Champagne adds
cache to their overall brand. The best known example is
Champagne Krug, a merchant which makes a single vineyard
Champagne, “Clos du Mesnil”. A Krug enologist, Nicolas
Audebert, was cautious to put Clos du Mesnil in its proper
perspective: “Ninety-nine percent of Champagne production
has nothing to do with terroir. It is interesting to take
note of anomalies like Clos du Mesnil, but you must not
forget that Champagnes are mosaics of many terroirs not
showcases for single ones.”

Audebert
emphasized the difficulty of working with only one base
wine. “The production process makes a big impact on the
resulting product. The original still wine, the wine which
most shows terroir, is lacking in so many respects. By
itself, it could not be the basis of a complete, balanced
Champagne.” There are other aspects that complicate a
Champagne’s direct connection to the terroir. Speaking of
Chardonnay, Sophie Larmandier (Champagne Larmandier-Bernier)
noted: “Only four or five clones of Chardonnay, all
developed in Champagne, are planted throughout the Cote des
Blancs. This creates uniformity of character. It lessens
terroir. We, however, select and propagate cuttings (a
process called mass selection) from our vineyards that meet
our needs and match our terroir.” That farmers must harvest
their grapes before they are physiologically mature suggests
that vines have not fully extracted all they can out of the
growing environment. The balance of acidity and sugar in
less-than-fully-ripe grapes is essential for a proper base
wine for Champagne. Many Champenois assert that low yielding
vines do not tend to make good base wines. Didier Gimonnet
(Champagne Pierre Gimonnet et Fils) knows that journalists
want to hear that he prefers low yielding vineyards, so he
told me: “I want to tell the truth. I have never produced
the Gimmonet style, one which emphasizes freshness and
elegance, with a low yield. My goal is 7O to 9O hectoliters
per hectare. I get the right balance of sugar and acidity at
these yields. At 5O hectoliters per hectare, the vin clairs
are too concentrated.” Emmanuel Fourny, Enologist (Champagne
Veuve Fourny) agreed: “If you go over a certain degree of
ripeness, you are not in a position to make fine Champagne.
The right rapport between acidity and sugar is
essential.”

On the other
hand, the Champenois I talked to uniformly agreed that it is
better to have older vines than younger ones. The ideal age
that my interviewees, all top quality producers, identified
was between 25 years and 7O years. In my experience, this is
quite a bit higher than what quality still wine producers
say. The reason they said was that older vines regulate
their yields. Walking with Sophie Larmandier in her
vineyard, she pointed to the dropped bunches of grapes lying
on the ground. “These come from the green harvest of a
farmer who does not work well. These vines produce more than
they need to.” Chantal Gonet of Champagne Gonet told me
that: “The roots of older vines go down 1O to 15 meters.”
This gives them a more constant source of water and
nutrients.

Another factor
that may be seen to take Champagne away from its connection
to terroir is the double alcoholic fermentation. Given the
fact that the fermentation process adds a layer of process
over fruit characteristics, it is odd that culture
recognizes wine’s ability to express terroir while it
overlooks that of less processed products, such as extra
virgin olive oil. But in Champagne production there are two
alcoholic fermentations, not one. Some Champagne producers
conduct the first fermentation with native yeasts, a factor
which is in line with terroir expression, but many more,
particularly the larger producers, prefer the security and
dependability of purchased, selected yeasts. Sophie
Larmandier told me that only 2 or 3 selected yeasts are
commonly used in Champagne. Champagne Larmandier-Bernier
uses native yeast. Not only can sugar be added to the
harvested grape juice, but the second fermentation requires
it. Sugar additions destroy terroir. Even worse, there is a
third addition of sugar after disgorgement. This final
addition, the dosage, helps balance wine acidity. A small
number of producers, however, make non-dosage Champagne for
discriminating customers, if not for their own home use. Out
of respect for terroir, Champagne Larmandier-Bernier adds no
dosage to one of its two single terroir Champagne, Terre de
Vertus. Most of the producers that I visited, all of them
selected because they promoted their interest in terroir,
took pride in adding a dosage of 4 or 5 grams of sugar per
liter, well below the average for brut Champagne. This
dosage is the least they can add without disturbing their
clients. Another factor complicating the expression of
Champagne terroir is the yeast of the second fermentation. A
second fermentation in a sealed bottle at a low temperature
in a liquid solution of about 1O.5 degrees alcohol requires
very special yeasts. They have to be selected and cultivated
by laboratories. These selected yeasts have no connection to
the wine’s terroir. Another factor much in discussion in
Champagne is whether vinification and maturation should be
conducted in stainless steel tanks or in oak barrels. I
heard, however, little discussion over which option best
preserves terroir. During the 198Os, the accepted wisdom was
to discard oak barrels in favor of stainless vats. Those in
favor of stainless steel pointed out how easy stainless
steel was to clean. More recently there has been concern
about stainless steel vats’ tendency to encourage reduction
problems (the smell of garlic or onion in the nose of a
Champagne). Most of the producers I visited during my stay
in Champagne emulated the use of older oak barrels. Sophie
Larmandier pointed out that the pioneer of the return to
oak, Anselme Selosse (Champagne Jacques Selosse), had
eschewed new oak some years ago. The current generation at
Larmandier-Bernier and Diebolt-Vallois are saddled with the
stainless tanks their parents had been advised to buy in the
198Os. Both Pierre Larmandier and Jacques Diebolt would love
to exchange their stainless for oak. But that costs a lot of
money. Jacques Diebolt showed me a barrel made from oak
harvested in the Champagne region. The vin clair inside was
wickedly astringent. There are hardly any good-sized oak
trees left in Champagne and it may be a good thing for
terroir Champagne! Delphine Geraud, the enologist in charge
of communication for the CIVC (Comite Interprofessionnel du
Vin de Champagne), set up a blind tasting of Blanc de Blancs
from the Cote des Blancs for me. She shyly identified her
favorite, Agrapart et Fils 1996 from Avize, a producer
solidly in the barrel camp. The slight mushroom and animal
smells and harder texture of oak barrel Champagne, however,
does not seem to perturb Champagne producers who respect
terroir.

Though they are
undeniably the most “terroir” of Champagnes, single vineyard
Champagnes are not the best place to start when trying to
understand what terroir means in Champagne. They are wines
of a single small space, too small, too unique, to give much
evidence about a more meaningful, general truth. In seeking
out terroir Champagne, the obvious place to look is at the
single cru or village wine.

The villages
(really, the vineyards identified with each village) of
Champagne are rated by a system called the Echelle des Crus,
which is not unlike the Bordeaux 1855 classification. The
Echelle des Cru dates back to 1919. It delimits villages and
assigns to them a quality ranking for grape varieties based
on 1OO points. Didier Gimonnet (Champagne Pierre Gimonnet et
Fils) told me: “The Echelle de Crus is a good measure of
quality.” Dominique Demarville, Cellarmaster ( Champagne
Mumm) also attested to its accuracy. Daniel Lorson, in
charge of Communications (CIVC), commented on its
functionality as a basis for fixing the price of Champagne
grapes: “There is no reason for it to exist now. From 199O
to 1996, there was a recommended price for each village’s
production based on the Echelle des Crus, but this has been
discontinued now.” In some quarters, the Echelle des Crus is
controversial. Daniel Aubertin, Director-Enologist of Paul
Goerg in Vertus stood up for his village: “Above 2O to 15
years (1985, to be exact), the neighboring village, Mesnil,
rose from the ranks of the Premier Crus to become a Grand
Cru. The president of the Vertus association of growers did
not want Vertus to move up too. In case of crisis, he
thought it would be easier to sell Premier Cru grapes
compared to Grand Cru grapes. Looking at his reasoning now,
he was clearly wrong. There is no reason why Vertus should
not be a Grand Cru.” But let’s put politics
aside.

For my research,
I focused on the Grand Cru villages of Cramant and Le Mesnil
sur Oger and the Premier Cru village of Vertus. I also took
into account the Premier Cru village of Cuis and the Grand
Cru Villages of Chouilly, Oger and Avize. Didier Gimonnet
(Champagne Pierre Gimmonet et Fils) remarked: “There is a
heart of earth in each village that is the best position for
vines. This was planted first. Around the heart, vineyards
with lesser soils have since been planted.” Emmanuel Fourny,
Enologist (Champagne Veuve Fourny), used the same term,
“heart” noting on a map where his best vineyards were
located, “There, les Barilliers, this is in the heart of
Vertus.” Some producers call the heart ‘Terre’, French for
earth or land. Champagne Jean Milan has a single vineyard
wine, Cuvee Terres de Noel. Champagne Larmandier-Bernier has
its Terre de Vertus made from two parcels within what they
believe is the best terroir in Vertus. Champagne Salon’s
Champagne, simply named Salon, along with Krug’s Clos du
Mesnil, are the most famous and costly Champagnes to come
out of the Cote des Blancs. Clos du Mesnil is a walled
vineyard, a clos, dead center in the village of Mesnil.
Champagne Salon is a made up of vins clairs that come from
grapes grown in different sites throughout the village.
Salon has grape purchase agreements with about 2O growers in
the choicest areas, within what it believes is the “heart”
of the village. It returns to these growers year after year
for their grapes. In that sense, Audrey Campos (Champagne
Salon) asserted that Salon is not a blend.

To understand
the terroirs of the villages, one has to first understand
the terroir of the Cote des Blanc as a whole. All the
villages that I have mentioned, except one, Cuis, lie on a
bank of east-facing slopes that descend to a flat plain.
Cuis sits on its own slope to the west of this bank of
slopes, on thicker, more clayey soil. The top of the bank of
slopes once formed the rim of a vast geological bowl called
the Paris Basin. It formed about 9O million years ago, when
a sea deposited skeletons and shells on an area more or less
centered under the present city of Paris. These sediments
created a layer of calcareous chalk some 2OO meters thick.
The center of this basin sank under the pressure of these
sediments pushing up a rim on its eastern flank. The bank of
east-facing slopes of the Cote des Blancs noted above are
the remnants of the rim of the Paris Basin. On top of the
bank at an elevation of about 23O meters above sea level,
the topsoil is clayey. As one goes down the hillside, the
topsoil consists of a decreasing percentage of clay and an
increasing amount of calcareous chalk. The lower third of
the slope has the thinnest topsoil, as thin as 2O
centimeters thick. Topsoil thicknesses along the bank of
slopes, range from 2O to 7O centimeters along the hillside –
the thinner the topsoil, the less vigorous the soil.
Underneath this topsoil is the deep layer of calcareous
chalk. The chalk drains well, allowing the top 2 meters or
so to be relatively dry, but below that it becomes
increasingly saturated with water. While the topsoil offers
the vines nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium and
phosphate, the chalk subsoil offers the vines a limitless
supply of water. Daniel Lorson of the CIVC told me that in
the stifling hot and dry summer of 2OO3, while the vineyards
of the Aube to the south suffered from drought, those of
Reims and Epernay (all on top of a thick chalk substrata)
remained drought free. The vineyards that lie at the base of
the gentle slopes descending to the plain are the best
sources of Chardonnay grapes for Champagne
production.

The exposition
of these slopes is mainly towards the east. The producers of
the Cote des Blanc prefer eastern exposures over other
exposures for Chardonnay. Because the plain spreads out to
the east, exposure to the sun is best for east facing
slopes. An eastern exposure allows the ground to warm up
earlier in the morning than would be the case for any other
exposure. Therefore, initiation of photosynthesis occurs
sooner. According to Gilles Lancelot (Champagne
Lancelot-Pienne), east-facing vineyards in Cramant are
harvested before south-facing ones.

The bank of
slopes of the Cote des Blanc undulates and bulges out at
points along the way, creating slopes and expositions that
define unique terroirs along the way. For example, there is
a bulge to the east just north of Cramant, creating
south-facing to north-facing slopes along a bank that
eventually curves up to Chouilly, itself, again on an
east-facing slope. The producers that I spoke to uniformly
preferred the east-facing slopes on the bulge – the
north-facing were least preferred. This was Dominique
Demarville’s (Cellarmaster at Champagne Mumm which produces
a famous Cramant, Mumm de Cramant) view of the intricacies
of village terroir: “Within Cramant there are many different
Cramants. It is mostly a question of the situation of
parcels and blocks. In some years, Cramant at the top is
better than at the middle. In other years, a Cramant facing
south is better than Cramant facing east. I choose to buy
based more on tasting than on the location or the reputation
of a specific parcel.” Oger is another case. While Avize,
just to the north, is a gradual slope that comes down from
crest of the bank, Oger sits on a slope that descends at
first steeply, then suddenly levels out and becomes rather
flat. In Oger, gradients of vineyards vary greatly. The
village itself lies in a cavity between a southeast facing
hillside just south of Avize and a northeast facing hillside
just north of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. Oger is protected within
this cavity from hailstorms while neighboring Avize is not.
This situation indicates that there should be more quality
and style variation among sites in Oger than among sites in
Avize. Vertus presents us with another situation. It has not
only varying exposures and gradients, but also varying soil
types. It also presents us not only with Chardonnay but with
also with Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, although less is
planted than Chardonnay. There are patches of soil north of
the village which are the classic thin topsoil over
calcareous chalk. Elsewhere north of the village, and in
most locations south of the village, there is thicker and
more fertile topsoil. The patches with classic Cote des
Blancs soil almost exclusively contain Chardonnay. These are
considered to be the best sites in Vertus. In more clayey
spots high along the crest of the hills, and in lower areas
where there is thicker and richer soil, Pinot tends to be
planted along with Chardonnay.

While the
concept of terroir is important behind the scenes in
Champagne, it has yet to attract the attention of the US
wine trade and consumers. Consolidation in the distribution
sector in the US wine trade has reinforced the power of the
big Champagne houses. There are two few distributors for all
the many Champagne houses and grower-bottlers. The
well-known Champagne houses can bring attention to – and
leverage -their products, forcing distributors to pay more
attention to them. The big brands, too, are easier for
distributors to sell. The Champagne houses have little to
gain from elevating the terroir discussion, as it could
undermine the prestige now associated with the Champagne
blend and lead consumers to believe that in Champagne “small
is beautiful”. Their products also flow through powerful
international distribution channels created by international
drinks companies. There is at least one pioneer here in the
USA, importer Terry Theise. He brings in a range of small
terroir-conscious Champagne producers.

Sophie
Larmandier (Champagne Larmandier-Bernier) told me that as
yet unblended Cru Champagnes are difficult to sell, even in
3 star restaurants in France. The sommeliers in these
restaurants, usually the very first to bring niche products
to the attention of the trade and consumers, have had little
success in stirring up interest in “terroir” Champagnes.
Unfortunately the signs are not good for the near term
evolution of this niche. Still this journalist is
hopeful.