Collecting 101

1.

What Is It?

Your typical bottle of bubbly from Mumm, Moët et Chandon, or Veuve Clicquot, is likely to contain Champagne blended from grapes grown across dozens, even hundreds, of vineyards throughout the Champagne region of France. As a result, each variety from any given house will virtually taste the same. Big companies do this in order to consistently produce a predictable and recognizable house style on a large scale. These house wines make up 87% of the Champagnes imported into the United States.

Grower Champagne, on the other hand, is bottled in small batches by a single vineyard (or closely located vineyards around a single village), meaning that the taste and quality of each bottle is highly specific to the grapes that produce it, when, where, and by whom they were grown. By spotlighting specific microregions, Grower Champagnes are some of the most interesting bottles to drink and collect. Furthermore, you can bet that this artisanal wine is produced by some of the most skilled craftsmen in the industry, given that the winemaker sees the process from start to finish: from cultivating the vineyard to harvesting the fruit to producing the wines.

2.

Identifying Champagnes

The world of wine may seem opaque, but if you master a few label-reading tricks, it can be much more straightforward. On the lower corner of the bottle’s label, you’ll find a pair of initials, which can be translated as the following:

NM (Négociant-Manipulant): This designates a Champagne produced by a large Champagne brand, otherwise known as a house, Maison, or negociant (pronounced neg-gosse-see-yont). Anything less than 94% estate fruit is required to have the NM designation. As mentioned above, the grand majority of Champagne is produced this way.

CM (Coopérative Manipulant): A grower’s cooperative that blends the fruit from their collective vineyards to sell under one or more brands. The vineyards in these cooperatives are typically situated around a single village. In some cases, smaller vineyards won’t have the facilities to bottle their own wine; the co-op model allows growers to share resources and work collaboratively. Each grower may have some involvement in the winemaking process.

RC (Récoltant-Coopérateur): A wine sourced from a single grower but produced entirely by a co-operative winemaking facility. These wines are sold under the grower’s own brand, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the grower has any involvement in the wine-making process.

RM (Récoltant-Manipulant): A grower who produces their own wine using a minimum of 95% estate fruit. This designation traditionally signifies a grower Champagne (although it is possible for a Maison to use this classification on a sub-label or brand). This is the designation to keep an eye out for!

3.

Terroir

Terroir (pronounced te-waa) refers to the environment in which the grapes for a particular wine are grown. This includes factors like soil, topography, and climate, which can vary drastically from vine to vine and season to season. Some aspects — like weather and landscape features — can’t be controlled by the grower, while others — like the use of pesticides or herbicides —are human-controlled. Terroir is important because the land can impart a unique quality to the grapes (and thus the wine) that is specific to one particular vineyard or growing site.

Because Grower Champagnes are produced by a single estate, they are what connoisseurs call “terroir-focused”. Artisanal winemakers tend to produce a different, terroir-focused style of wine each year in a relatively small quantity. Tasters can expect different qualities (even from the same wine) each year, as they express terroir as a unique moment in time. Additionally, growers are increasingly ageing their wines for three or more years before releasing them, ensuring the wines are allowed to fully express themselves before hitting the market.

In contrast, big Champagne houses favour consistency over the expression of terroir. The majority of Champagnes on the market are produced from a blend of grapes grown all over the region, rendering terror obsolete in the process.

4.

Growers

Though nearly 20,000 vineyards grow grapes in the region of Champagne, only about 5,000 produce and bottle their own wines. These wines are typically made in very small batches. And only 8% of the Champagne they produce gets exported. The scarcity of grower Champagne in the global market makes it relatively hard to find — and thus, highly sought after. Here are a few artisanal winemakers worth keeping a keen eye out for:

Bérêche & Fils
Brothers Raphaël and Vincent Bérêche stopped using all chemical herbicides in 2003, and they employ ten full-time employees to tend their vines (unheard of given the estate’s holdings are only nine hectares) to ensure perfection.

Chartogne-Taillet
Situated in Montagne de Reims, this estate originated in the 15th century by the Talliet family. Still family-owned, the winemaker uses organic farming methods and ages each wine for between eight and eighteen months.

Champagne Dhondt-Grellet
Eric Dhondt and Edith Grellet started their label in 1986 (they had previously been selling off their grapes to other houses). Since then, their son Adrien has taken over the winemaking and is slowly increasing their range of Champagnes with parcels in two villages: Cramant and Cuis.

Frédéric Savart
With just four hectares, Fred Savart makes almost a dozen wines on the estate where his grandfather purchased his first vine in 1947. Though he began his career as an athlete, Savart has truly made a name for himself in the artisanal wine industry.

Pierre Peters
Rodolphe Péters is of the fourth generation to lead this estate since its founding in 1919. Located in the southern Côte des Blancs, the estate holds 18 hectares of vineyards.

Selosse
Champagne Selosse is produced by a family-owned company in Avize on slightly more than eight hectares of vines. The estate was founded in the 1950s by Jacques Selosse and his family, with the first vintage bottled in 1960. Anselme Selosse, who took over from his father Jacques in 1980, is the current owner of this estate.  Anselme and his son Guillaume produce only 50,000 bottles per year, so bottles for sale are extremely rare. The champagnes have a distinct, almost artistic interpretation of the Côte des Blancs, as well as some delicious Pinot Noirs from Ambonnay, and Mareuil.

Cedric Bouchard
Cedric Bouchard a viticulturalist who founded his own Champagne House, Roses de Jeanne, in 2000, was named Champagne's best winemaker by Gault & Millau in 2008. With a total of 1.09ha under vines, he started out as the smaller owner to produce his own label but moved away from the usual practice of blending different sources and vintages to make a single cuvee and now makes extraordinary Champagnes, each from a single vineyard, using a single vintage, and a single grape variety.

5.

Popularity

Like many small batches or single origin products, grower Champagne is a relatively recent phenomenon. Champagne houses have dominated the region for nearly the last 400 years, and most vineyards in the Champagne region sold grapes, not wine, however at the beginning of the 20th century, something changed. Grape growers became fed up with big houses pocketing the majority of the profit, while they continued to struggle financially. In 1929, a large band of growers collectivised to form a co-op that would give them leverage in the market. When the big houses weren’t able to buy grapes at prices they wanted, the grower Champagne movement was born. Growers found they could make more money making wine (whether collectively or by themselves) than they could by selling grapes to bigger houses.

Since then, land in the region has become exponentially expensive, giving those who own their own vineyard the economic advantage over houses that must buy grapes from others. This allows growers to price their wines well below those sold by big houses. Given what we know about the quality and interest of grower wines, it may come as a surprise to learn that artisanal wines are typically far more affordable than those produced by familiar names.