Jiles's Blog

It's the most famous street in Champagne: The Avenue de Champagne in Epernay. For hundreds of years it's been the preserve of big houses such as Moët & Chandon, Pol Roger, Perrier-Jouët, De Venoge and a few others, but recently a few new names have started to appear. Names that you may not have heard of yet, but the chances are that you will hear of them soon.

Yes, the grower champagnes are starting to move into the most illustrious piece of real estate in town.

First was André Bergère who bought an elegant, but neglected house and did a magnificent job of restoring it to its former glory. The company has it's winery and most of its 40 or so hectares of vines just south of the Côte des Blancs in the village of Fèrebrianges. It won't surprise you to hear they make some excellent blanc de blancs champagnes.

Champagne Michel Gonet hails from Avize and as well as champagnes they have interest in other vineyard regions around France making them quite a diverse company.

Collard Picard is from Villers sous Chatillon in the Vallée de la Marne. Not a place that's on everyone's route so their new boutique on the Avenue de Champagne should get them a lot more attention.

It's been a whle since I tasetd their chanpagnes but I do remember their fabulous rosé: a blend of 50% Pinot Meunier and 50% Pinot Noir  with a wonderfully soft taxture and rich fruity taste. Once tasted, it was almost everyones's favourite.

It's good to see some of these smaller producers with the vision and ambition to move on to the Avenue. Their champagnes bear comparision with almost all the better known brands; all that was lacking was big enough thinking, but obviously that's beginning to change, at least for some.

One of the things that I find most enjoyable about living in Champagne is the people you meet. Of course speaking to the champagne makers and tasting their grower champagnes is wonderful but in fact you can meet fascinating people at any moment.

Last week, when the snow had finally melted, I knew that there would be lots of people out in the vineyards finishing off the last of the pruning (LaTaille). They had to stop pruning during the really cold weather because the frost can easily penetrate into the heart of the cut vines and kill them. Now the weather is  a little less cold they are hurrying to get the pruning done before Spring arrives.

I came across one particularly jovial chap called M. Renoir.

No, he isn't a painter, but as well as being a vigneron, he's also something of an inventor too, as you'll see in the video below.

La Taille is one of the crucial steps in viticulture. It may look simple, but you have to know what you are doing and you have to be prepared to spend hours and hours in the vineyards because it's something that can only be done by hand.

With 8,000 or so vine plants per hectare you can easily understand that pruning is a time consuming job, but it's just one of many tasks for the vigneron during the year. In fact when you realise how much labour goes into the production of champagne, you'll be asking yourself why it is so cheap!

Anyway, you'll learn more in the video and have the pleasure of meeting M. Renoir.

Stay Bubbly

Jiles

A few months ago I was out and about in Reims and I noticed a semi-derelict building on the piazza in front of the cathedral. You could just make out the remains of a sign that revealed that the building used to be the Garage de la Cathedral.

What a strange place to have a garage I thought; it would be much better as a bar with some tables chairs and parasols outside. It’s a shame no one has bought it to renovate.

Well, last Saturday I was in the same spot and saw that some smart entrepreneur has done just that. What a smart move. They say that it’s all about location, location, location and this place is perfect.

I would think that it will do a fantastic trade and will quickly become one of THE places to go in Reims, so if you’re going to be in Reims this summer be sure to check it out.

It’s going to be called Au Bureau, The Office, so people will be able to ring home way after they were due back and say “I’m so sorry but I’ve been delayed and I’m still at The Office darling”

There’s still a bit of work to do mind you, but they should be finished in a few months and that’s a lot more than the guys working on the original cathedral could say.

Champagne has become such a universally known drink that it’s understandable, in a way, that many people think that all champagne is pretty much the same. Moët & Chandon, or Taittinger, or Piper Heidsieck are much of a muchness they would say.

However, if you’re a regular champagne drinker, or if you take the time to really pay attention to what you’re drinking, you’ll realise nothing could be further from the truth and that applies just as much to the small grower champagnes as to the big brands. In fact champagne is one of the most complex and diverse wines in the world and in this short article and the video below you’ll discover a little about why that is so.

You see, champagne is almost always a blend of many different wines, made from different grape varieties, grown in different villages and picked in different years. When you start to think about the number of possible permutations the mind starts to boggle, so in this article let’s just focus on the different villages or crus as they are sometimes referred to.

Even though Champagne is divided into several large sub-areas that are generally considered as having the same sort of characteristics: La Montagne de Reims, La Côte des Blancs, La Vallée de La Marne and La Côte des Bars, within each area you still get significant differences.

Why is that? Well, there are some 320 villages where grapes are cultivated and you can imagine that no two villages have exactly the same characteristics: the soil varies; the micro-climate is unique to each location. In one village the slopes face south towards the sun, and give ripe grapes with a high sugar content, whilst another village may face north which means the grapes will take longer to ripen and the juice will be a little more tart, or fresh as they say.

La Côte des Blancs provides a good example. This is a ridge of hillside that stretches south from Epernay for about 30 or so kilometres. Most of the vineyards face south-east, but there are folds and dips in the land so it’s impossible for all the slopes to face exactly in the same direction. Some vineyards are at the top of the slope and some at the bottom where the air may be a degree or two cooler. In some villages the chalk subsoil is really close to the surface to give a pronounced mineral quality to the wines, whereas in others the chalk lies deeper under a thicker covering of top-soil. All these things have an influence on the wines made in each village.

This diversity of grapes and the base wines made from them (base wines are still wines made in the first part of the champagne-making process and before there are any bubbles) means that the winemaker really has to know what he or she is doing when the time comes to blend the wines together to produce the final, distinctive style and taste they are looking for.

If you are one of my Facebook contacts you’ll remember that just before Christmas I said that I had been down to La Côte des Blancs to visit Charles Gimonnet at Champagne Gimonnet-Gonet and to taste some of their base wines. I promised that I would soon post the video of the visit and I’m happy to say that you can now view it below this post.

Charles takes us through a tasting of base wines from 4 of the most famous villages in La Côte des Blancs: Oiry, Oger, Cramant and Le Mesnil sur Oger, and describes the characteristics of each one. It’s a real insight into the art of blending.

There’ll be more chances soon to take a look at the different crus in some of the other parts of Champagne, so do come back soon. Meanwhile…

Stay Bubbly

Jiles