Champagne, Uncorked by Alan Tardi

Author:Alan Tardi
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781610396899
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2016-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

In ancient times it was the indigenous peoples against the Roman invaders. Later it was landless serfs against landed nobility. After the French Revolution, peasants, who’d finally gotten a small piece of land of their own, were resentful of the wealthy merchants who had huge estates. At a certain point the hot commodity shifted from textiles to sparkling wine, and the farmers’ principal activity shifted to grape growing. As demand for Champagne rose, so did the price of grapes, and the vine growers did a bit better, especially the ones who were able to acquire enough capital to start up a press. But there was still a sharp divide between the farmers who grew grapes and the merchants who produced, bottled, labeled, and sold Champagne.

This division has characterized the Champagne region since the moment the sparkling wine began to take off, and it remains so to this day: the vignerons who grow grapes in Champagne own about 90 percent of the land but produce only around 30 percent of the Champagne on the market, while the maisons who make and commercialize nearly 70 percent of the Champagne on the market own only about 10 percent of the vineyards.23

While the growing of grapes and making (and marketing) of Champagne are two very different activities, both of them are critical to the industry, and thus the two groups, vigneron and maison, are inexorably locked in a close interdependence. But this has not always been easy.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, as the fame and demand for the sparkling wine of Champagne continued to skyrocket throughout the world, so did imposters. A multitude of sparkling wines began to turn up in places well outside the region and even outside of France, such as Germany, Eastern Europe, and even the United States. They were bubbly and said “Champagne” on the bottle—so how was anyone to know the difference?

Many Champenois were quick to understand the potential danger of this and rally to combat the problem.24 But how could one realistically attempt to protect Champagne and prevent abuse of its name if no legal restriction existed and if the vine-growing and wine-producing area was not even officially delineated?

While some were trying to figure out how to deal with outside threats, other Champagne bottlers, faced with scarce supplies, rising costs, growing competition for market share, or simply a desire for higher profits, began sourcing less-expensive grapes from outside the immediate vine-growing area, and many were also adulterating their products with ingredients that had nothing whatsoever to do with grapes.

Vignerons, already stretched to the limit by phylloxera and a series of dismal vintages and struggling for their very survival, were nearing the breaking point. Champenois against “counterfeiters”; farmers against merchants; vignerons of the northern department of the Marne against those in the southern department of the Aube—tension was building in many different directions and hostilities were percolating.

The French government, having been petitioned by both growers and merchants, stepped in to resolve the situation. And on December 17,

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