Luxury Life & Style

champagne Luxury Life & Style's Food and Wine Editor Bonnie Graves and Charles Philipponnat Champagne is unique, and communicating this uniqueness of product and place has become increasingly important as the wine world goes global. Champagne, in partnership with regions like Jerez, Spain (sherry), Oporto, Portugal (port) and most tellingly, Napa Valley, has led the charge in defending its place name in the courts and in the marketplace. It aggressively pursues products that falsely bear the Champagne name, and has even successfully removed itself as a descriptor for sparkling wine production, i.e., a bottle can no longer read “méthode champenoise” if it does not contain grapes from the Champagne region. Why the worry? Because Champagne is a luxury product with strong brand capital, it is copied just as aggressively as the fake Her- mès and Chanel bags that line Canal Street. In a culture where brand is king, the CIVC isn’t about to let hundreds of years of sweat equity be co-opted by Chinese or other copy-cat wines. We began our harvest tour in Reims, (pronounced “Rantz” in the local dialect) which is one of the two main cities for Champagne production along with neighboring Épernay. What a trip to this region most reveals, however, is the delicate balance between big and small, city and village and, most importantly, house and grower that keeps the bubbles bubbling. The Champagne region is comprised of 323 separate villages that grow grapes, either at the villages, the premier or grand cru quality levels, and these villagers in turn sell grapes at established prices to the larger Champagne houses like Moët, Pommery or Roederer. Sometimes growers may choose to sell their grapes to cooperatives, of which Champagne Nicholas Feuillate is the largest, or perhaps even bottle some of their own Champagne under the label designate, “RM” or récoltant-manipulant. These growerproduced Champagnes make up only 20% of the region’s sales, yet the growers own an astounding 90% of the land. Frequently, they own less than one hectare (2.5 acres) so the cost of bottling their own wine is far greater than the profit that can be made by selling their grapes to one of the big houses or “grandes marques.” It’s a mistake to assume that the big houses are the bad guys, though, as the story is much more complicated than a simple David and Goliath tale. Rather, it’s an intricate example of wine mutualism, in which winemakers at the big houses function more like diplomats keeping their growers happy than as stickyfingered alchemists making sparkling wine. And Champagne is a hugely ambassadorial business. One of the most controversial topics in the region these days is the possibility of expanding the Champagne AOC’s traditional geographical boundaries in order to keep up with worldwide demand for the product. (China and Russia both now feature CIVC Bureau offices, as these two Champagne markets are 78 Luxury Life & Style November/December 2007 Photo by John Hodder.

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