Tiny Bubbles to the People: Liberté for Champagne

Champagne has been undergoing a mini revolution of sorts, and we the people are the beneficiaries. The House of Ruinart was established in France in 1729, and this and other Maisons, or Houses of Champagne, reigned supreme for nearly three centuries, going so far as to dictate the cost of grapes to the growers who farmed them. They continue to have a hand in controlling pricing, styles, and even the very idea of what Champagne is, but thanks to a proliferation of new Champagnes from the growers themselves, the market has expanded. The people now have more options than ever before. The concept of Champagne had always been one of a cuveé, or blended wine, an ingenious way to create consistent, complex wines year after year. Each Maison presented a particular house style — like Bollinger’s Special Cuveée, a rich, luminous wine. They combine wine-making techniques, using different varieties of grapes from any number of diverse sites. Reserve wines are added that have been held back from previous vintages, to buffer out the edges of variable and sometimes difficult harvests.The possibilities are endless: Blending is a true art form, but one that promotes homogeneity in a world of diversity. One thing that sets Champagne the place apart from its French neighbors is in its application of “terroir,” this French notion of a consumable good, like wine or cheese, tasting of the place it’s made. In Burgundy this concept is applied to every parcel of land. Its contents are bottled separately, to drill into the specificity of place for a meticulous understanding of each site. In Champagne, meanwhile, we only get an impression or taste of the region as a whole, with the blending masking any individual component. There are 15,000 growers who own 90 percent of the land in Champagne and sell most of their fruit to the Maisons. Some of them have always made their own wine, but their holdings are often limited to a few hectares, meaning miniscule quantities compared to the Maisons. They also lack the diversity in materials or storage space required for reserves needed for a consistent blend. But what they did have was a unique place, a plot of individuality to explore in every vintage, meaning a whole new way to think about and enjoy Champagne. The tiny quantities kept the wines from proliferating outside of France. That is, until a few importers, champions of “farmer fizz,” paved the way for the little vignerons to sneak in and perform a coup of sorts. Their products now dominate many great wine lists and independent retail shelves across the U.S. Importers will acquiesce that the real driving force behind this sea change was the talent and the renegade thinking of the growers. Their revolutionary acts of keeping their grapes, and bottling in quantities absolutely dwarfed by the Maisons, was a huge risk. If no one bought the bubbles, they’d be stuck with them. Instead, we all now have the most delicious opportunity to explore unknown terroir through the lens of tiny bubbles.

Tiny Bubbles to the People: Liberté for Champagne

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