Jiles's Blog

Crémant or Champagne

There’s no denying that the world of wine is undergoing a period of change – sales of low or non-alcoholic drinks are growing fast whilst sales of wine are at best stagnant and at worst in marked decline. Some say that this upheaval is only cyclical and simply a reflection of widespread and (one hopes, temporary) economic woes, yet others see a structural shift with little chance of things returning to the patterns of growth experienced over the past few decades.

Whatever the truth of the matter, one category of wine that is bucking the trend is sparkling wine - sales are booming.

The big winner is the world of sparkling wine is Prosecco, but sales of Cava are buoyant too and this is true for Crémant as well which brings us to the main topic of this article.

What is Crémant?

Crémant is the term applied to sparkling wines made in France outside the Champagne region which is a category apart. It’s interesting to note that the term Crémant was used in Champagne in the past when it referred to wines produced in Champagne that were deliberately made to have a reduced level of effervescence. In the 1970s the term was relinquished by the champenois and since then its use is reserved for the 9 other regions in France that produce sparkling wine using a method broadly similar to that used in Champagne.

Against this background it’s inevitable that Crémant is often compared to champagne.

Although it is generally accepted that champagne is of higher quality than Crémant, champagne is considerably more expensive, something that is largely due to the extremely high price of land in Champagne, and it is undoubtedly the lower price of Crémant that is main factor driving sales. A good quality bottle of Cremant can be found for around £12 in the UK retail market whilst the least expensive bottle of champagne will be around £30 (although lower promotional prices can be found in the largest retail chains). The relative positions will be applicable in other markets too.

Many consumers feel that there’s not much difference between champagne and Crémant (or Cava, or Prosecco for that matter). “After all, they’ve all got bubbles, haven’t they?” these consumers might say. These same customers might well wonder why champagne is so much more expensive.

On the other hand, consumers with a little more knowledge and curiosity might reply “That’s nonsense. It’s like saying that a Sauvignon Blanc from Chile is the same as a Puligny Montrachet from Bourgogne because they’re both white wines.” For these people the difference is price is obvious and fully justified.

A double-edged sword

The comparison with champagne poses something of a dilemma for makers of Crémant:

Do they settle for the idea that Crémant will always be seen as a cheaper version of champagne: a somewhat reductive position that would mean that they must rely on volume growth to grow profits, or do they strive to improve the quality of their wines and establish an image that is closer to that of champagne: a choice that may well put the brakes on the rapid growth in sales that we are currently seeing?

The debate is far from settled as we can see from the following comments which appeared in a recent article in The Drinks Business.

Some Crémant producers outrightly reject the label of simply being an affordable champagne.

“Crémant is not champagne” While there are indeed similarities between the two, the aim “is not to fight against Champagne”.

“We have our own grapes, exclusive terroir and unique climate, so we are different”

 “Being described as ‘affordable’ is a negative perception because it means you are cheaper. It is not a question of price, but a question of taste.”

 “We are in two completely different universes with the same method, but most of all we are complementary,” he says. “It depends on your taste and the moment.”

On the other hand, some producers take a different view

“The comparisons (between Crémant and champagne) were always numerous, but the quality has increased by a lot. Nowadays these comparisons are rather beneficial.”

Another maintains that “if you taste blind, you don’t feel the difference”, with good-quality Crémant aligning with medium-quality Champagne.

“The biggest challenge will be to show and prove that Crémant wines are of very good quality, that numerous Crémants are better than Champagnes and to make it acknowledged by the consumer’”

The jury is out

There are perils associated with both the strategies outlined above for Crémant: the one accepts a lower status than champagne, the other risks pushing prices too close to that of champagne and discouraging the very consumers who are driving the current growth of sales.

So, will Crémant ever rival or even surpass the success of champagne in terms of either sales volume or imagery?

That seems unlikely to me, although I’m biased given that I’ve spent large parts of my career in the world of champagne.

What do you think?

 p.s.

Many readers may be wondering why I write Crémant with a capital C and champagne with a small c

This is something of an anomaly, I admit, and it is definitely NOT because I regard champagne as being of lower status. It’s a throwback to the 20+ years I spent living in France when I learned that La Champagne refers to the region called Champagne and that Le champagne refers to the wine made in that region.

My way of distinguishing between the two is to use a capital C for the region and a small c for the wine.

It makes sense to me, but I can see that it raises some eyebrows.

What retail price is right for your Private Champagne Brand?

It’s a question that’s really important for anyone considering creating their own brand of champagne and I wish that there was a simple formula that allowed you to come up with the right answer every time, but there isn’t, so let’s consider some retail price in the U.K. and see what pointers they might give us.

These prices are not directly comparable to prices in other markets but the positioning relatively to one another is relevant, as are the price categories that emerge.

In my view, there are, broadly speaking, 4 price bands

image. The Drinks Business

Below £25

These prices can only be found in large supermarket chains who are selling their own brand.

The supermarkets can achieve these prices because they place very large orders and can command the lowest possible cost prices; they operate on very thin profit margins; they spend little or nothing on marketing because they have a ready-made distribution network and in addition to all those advantages, they often run price promotions on their own brand champagne as a loss leader to attract customers to their stores.

The quality of these champagnes is often high, and the wines appeal not just to consumers who know very little about champagne and buy on price alone, but also to more knowledgeable drinkers who are looking for a great deal.

1) £35-£50

These are what I would call ‘Accessible brands’ or ‘Challenger brands’

You find many of the best-selling and best-known brands in this category together with some brands that have an established history but are less well recognised by the majority of champagne drinkers.

The marketing investment behind these brands is often considerable with a consequent impact on profit margins, however, the bulk of sales are made in this  category and thus profits can also be significant.

These brands appeal to champagne drinkers who base their buying decision primarily on brand name recognition rather than any deeper knowledge of champagne and also to those with a little more experience of champagne who are open to trying new brands, but within reasonable budgetary constraints.

These are brands that can be served with confidence at any celebration without the risk of being seen as ‘cheap’ by serving a supermarket brand.

2) £60 - £90

In this category we find special cuvées and vintage champagnes for more discerning drinkers.

Some of these consumers have a genuinely deep appreciation of champagne and take pleasure in the finer details of the brand story and in the undoubtedly high quality of the champagne. Others choose the brand because it is less well known and will invite comment, thus presenting an opportunity to reveal their wine knowledge.

Usually, the sales volumes are significantly lower than less expensive brands and profit margins higher.

3) £100 > as high as you like

 Ultra-premium brands whose prices have no real reference point and cannot be rationalised logically which is the classic characteristic of a luxury brand.

Celebrity brands are often found in this category.

Profit margins are extremely high because of the diminishing returns in terms of the quality/price relationship: twice the price does not mean twice the quality or twice the cost of production.

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This attempt to categorise different types of champagne is a generalisation and the market conditions as well as the rate of tax and the structural costs of doing business vary from country to country, so the exact prices do not exactly translate to all markets.

Having said this, a rule of thumb that has traditionally been used as a guideline in the USA is that the retail price is between 3 and 4 times the cost price in France. This takes into account the margin requirements of importers, distributors and retailers at each stage of the chain, but the real factors determining where you set your retail price are much more complex and include

• the price of competing brands already in the market
• the expectations of the consumers you are targeting
• the distinctive features of your own brand and of course
• the cost price and the projected profit margins of your brand

For a more in-depth exploration of this topic and anything else relating to creating your own private champagne brand, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

When to start picking

As if life wasn’t difficult enough for grape growers and wine makers wherever in the world they may be, when it comes to the harvest in Champagne, there seems to be an extra level of complication, or to be more accurate, several extra layers. Too many in fact to explain in just one short article, so let’s deal with them one topic at a time starting with the decision about when to start picking.

You might assume that each vineyard owner would simply check the ripeness of his or her crop as the fruit matured on the vines and decide on the right moment to start picking. To a large extent this is still the case, but things are a little more complex than that.

There are some 320 villages in Champagne and these are spread out over an area that, broadly speaking, is 120 km square. You can imagine that the variations in location mean that the grapes in one area don’t always ripen at exactly the same rate as the grapes in another.

In addition, there are three main varieties of grape that can be used to make champagne and each one has different characteristics that affect the ripening process, so they don’t all reach optimum ripeness at the same moment.

It’s very difficult therefore to impose any form of uniformity on the roll-out of the harvest. However, establishing guidelines and structure to the champagne industry is exactly why the governing body called the Comité Champagne was set up many decades ago.

There are many good reasons for this, not least of which is the maintenance of quality standards and one of the tools used to do this is to fix the start date of the harvest.

With this in mind, each year the Comité Champagne publishes a list of the dates on which picking can start for each of the three main grape varieties in each of the 320 villages. Here’s an extract from the list.

A lot of work goes into preparing this list, but in reality, the dates are only a guideline rather than an obligation. To understand why this should be so we need to look at what is happening to the grapes in the vineyards.

A grape grower will be monitoring several indicators to judge the best moment to start picking. To do this they regularly take a few samples of grapes from the vineyards in the weeks approaching the expected harvest date. They then test the sample and record a variety of measures such as the weight of each bunch, the weight of the individual grapes and the ‘technical maturity’ which means the level of sugar and of acidity. The levels of sugar and acidity must evolve in equilibrium to produce the ideal combination that is suitable for making champagne.

 As the sugar content goes up however, the level of acidity goes down and if it goes down too much any champagne made from those grapes may lack the freshness and zing that is essential for good champagne.

This is a subject that greatly occupies the minds of champagne makers because the warmer temperatures experienced since the turn of the century have tended to produce a high sugar content earlier and earlier during the season.

To make matters more complex, the ‘aromatic maturity’ which refers to the development of the aromas and flavours in the grapes, does not necessarily coincide with the technical maturity and the grape grower has to decide on the moment when both indicators are at acceptable levels.

Wait too long for the aromatic maturity to develop and you risk the technical maturity being past its best; pick on a date when the technical maturity is good and your risk missing out on a better level of aromatic maturity.

It’s a tricky balancing act and to get it right requires a lot of skill and experience. Fortunately, if a vigneron feels that it is crucial to start picking before the official start date, it’s always possible to get an exemption, but then you may well wonder about the usefulness of publishing start dates when, in practical terms the final decision on when to harvest comes down to the grape grower’s decision, but that’s a debate for another time.

In the next article we’ll look at the question of how much to pick

In the meantime, all the best and if you have any questions or comments, you can email me at jiles@mymaninchampagne,com

Bunches, bunches everywhere, nor not a bunch to press

Readers who are not familiar with the inner workings of the champagne industry may be surprised by the title of this article, which is an echo of lines from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

They may also be surprised to learn that in Champagne grape growers (vignerons) are often not allowed to pick all the grapes that Nature has provided on the vines – at least not to press those grapes and turn them into champagne.

In this post I’ll explain the thinking that lies behind this seemingly strange situation.

Very broadly speaking there are two types of champagne maker: on the one hand, there are the well-known houses (maisons) whose names you may well have heard of; there are some two or three hundred of these and they account for by far the lion’s share of all the bottles sold around the world but they own a relatively small share of the 34,000 or so hectares of vines planted in Champagne. They own so few vineyards relative to the number so bottles they sell that they are obliged to buy grapes from third parties.

Those third parties are the many thousands of grapes growers who own the lion’s share of the vineyards. These plots are often very small indeed, but nevertheless the price of grapes being as high as it is in Champagne, selling the grapes from even a small plot can provide a healthy side income and if you own a larger plot then the sale of grapes becomes your main source of income.

The maisons are great at sales and marketing but own few vineyards, whilst the vignerons own the vineyards but lack the skills and resources to sell anywhere near the number of bottles that the maisons can do.

Given this situation, you can see  that the two categories of actor in Champagne have a sort of symbiotic relationship – each one needs the other in order to survive and prosper.

So far so good and the interests of both side are aligned.

However….

Things get a little more complex and even tense when it comes to deciding on two important issues: the price each year per kilo of grapes and the weight of grapes that is harvested each year.

As regards the price of grapes, the maisons want to buy grapes at the best possible price to keep their costs of production down whilst the vignerons want to sell at the highest price they can get.

To manage this potential conflict of interest a governing body called the Comité Champagne (CIVC), was established many years ago to allow actors on both sides to express their needs with a view to reaching a happy compromise.

Until a couple of decades ago, the price of grapes each year would be set by Comité Champagne, but nowadays it is the market and the individual agreements between buyers and sellers that determine the price.

A similar conflict of interest can exist when it comes to the size of the harvest and here several factors are at play.

First, the weather influences the size of the harvest. In record years the vines can be laden with up to about 18,000 kg of grapes per hectare, whilst in poor years yields can be as low as 4,000 kg and if a disaster such as a severe hail storm were to strike, some vignerons can be left with no harvest at all.

Broadly speaking however, an average yield in Champagne is 10,000 kg per hectare which, as an aside, is enough to make about 8,500 bottles of champagne.

But things are not quite so straightforward as you might imagine because the state of the global champagne market now comes into consideration.

For twelve months or more sales of champagne have been in decline and as sales slowdown the stock of bottles in the masons’ cellars increases. There’s a cost associated with keeping bottles in the cellars for several years whilst they nature and the bigger the stock, the higher the cost.

Right now, the last thing the maisons want is to buy large quantities of grapes and turn them into bottles of champagne that they won’t be able to sell quickly.

Meanwhile, the vignerons have a different point of view. Whilst they understand that it is in no one’s interest to produce more bottles than can be readily sold, they still need to live and so they are seeking to pick and sell as many grapes as can  be absorbed by the market and in this sort of situation, the vigneron’s estimate of the correct amount of grapes to pick is usually higher than that of the maisons.

This is where the Comité Champagne comes into the picture to find a compromise and this year, with about a month to go until the harvest starts,  they have announced a limit 9,000 kg per hectare on the amount of grapes that can be picked and turned into champagne.

There’s one last turn to the story.

Any grapes on the vines in excess of 9,000 kg may be picked and pressed, but the juice must be held back in reserve and not yet bottled as champagne. This juice can be released in future as and when market conditions require it.

That then, is why vignerons in Champagne cannot always use all the grapes that Nature has provided on the vines (at least not immediately). It’s a system that has stood the champagne industry in good stead for many years and has served to look after the interests of everyone concerned – not an easy task but one which seems to work.

If you have any thoughts or comments on this or anything else to do with champagne, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.