Jiles's Blog

TERROIR TRACKER

As series of article to help you get to know the Champagne terroirs.

Champagnes de Terroirs from one village (cru), or from just a few neighbouring villages, are becoming more and more popular these days so it pays to increase your knowledge of the these little communities and their vineyards.

In this series of short articles we’ll bring you a brief introduction to some well-known villages -plus some you should get to know - and we’ll give you a insight into each one.

FESTIGNY

Festigny is to be found in a small valley off the left bank of the Marne river approximately 20 kilometres from Epernay travelling down the Vallée de la Marne towards Château Thierry.

Festigny itself nestles at the foot of an imposing hill called ‘ Collines des Bois des Châtaigniers’ which overlooks the small village and the even smaller hamlets that make up this little enclave: Le Mesnil-le-Huttier, Beaurepaire, La Boulonnerie and Le Vivier Neuville.

There are just 400 inhabitants in Festigny and a good 100 of them are grape growers; this obscure yet revealing ratio which is repeated right across the 320 villages in Champagne region, gives you a good idea of the importance of champagne production to this area of France. The community is also home to the last remaining maker of wooden ridding racks (pupitres). 

The village is dissected by Le Flagot, and by several other picturesque streams which enter the Marne just a few kilometres to the north. The abundance of water means that the area is susceptible to Spring frost although for a few years now the noticeable increase of the average temperature has meant that this threat has rarely materialised.

A wide variety of different soil types can be found here ranging from clay and marl to sand, limestone and chalk which is full of fossils of the sea creatures that lived here many millions of years ago as you can often see by simply picking up a ump of chalk from the vineyards

Meunier, by far the dominant grape varietal, exhibits different characteristics according to the type of soil it is grown in. The more sandy soils on the lower slopes bring out citrus aromas in the wines; the clay in the soil on the higher slopes lends more body and length whilst the soil of the middle slopes tends to have more marl content which highlights red fruit aromas in the wines.

Pinot Meunier (or just Meunier as we are encouraged to say these days) has long been regarded – perhaps it would be more accurate to say, looked down on - as a somewhat rustic varietal whose main interest is as a blending grape that brings an attractive fruitiness to champagnes that can be sold and enjoyed with relatively little ageing, but which cannot be considered as really serious wines. Not surprisingly the local vignerons in Festigny are quick to correct this impression and to sing the praises of Meunier with some of them producing 100% Meunier champagnes and old vintage Meunier champagnes. Although the debate will no doubt continue for some time to come with opinions on both sides, what cannot be denied is the growing willingness of consumers and wine professionals alike to learn more about this undervalued varietal which, let’s not forget, accounts for nearly a third of all the vines in Champagne.

A few noteworthy wine makers and specialists in Meunier:

Festigny: Michel Loriot

Le Mesnil-le-Huttier: Gaudinat-Boivin (image:Hervé and David Gaudinat)

La Boulonnerie: Christophe Mignon

Map credit: Michelin

At this time of year a sort of rash appears in the champagne vineyards – a rash of white vans dotted all over the slopes as the vignerons hurry to finish pruning their vines before they really start growing again after their winter rest.

There’s nothing to stop the vignerons from pruning as early as one month after the harvest in September, or October, but with the fermentation and still wine-making to manage, not to mention the build of up sales in the crucial couple of months at the end of each year, pruning is not top of the list of priorities.

It can get seriously cold in Champagne in winter and there is a risk that if you prune a vine at the wrong time – just before a severe frost – the cold will penetrate the wound left on the vine by the pruning and severely damage, if not kill it. Besides, who wants to work outside in temperatures approaching zero or below?

However, come the month of March everything is in full swing. By this time the severe cold is usually past and slightly warmer days remind the vignerons that spring is just around the corner. Before long the sap will be rising in the vines and so it’s important to get the pruning before that happens.

The old champenois saying seems to ring true even in the 21^st century:

“ Taille tôt taille tard, rein ne vaut la taille de mars”

“Prune first, prune last – nothing beats pruning in March”.

Out come the white vans, the little rolling stools on which the workers sit as they work their way down the rows carefully pruning each and every  plant, and the rusty old wheelbarrows in which the off-cuts are burned leaving tell-tale wisps of white smoke drifting across the rather barren looking vineyards (actually, ‘wheelbarrow ‘is rather a flattering term for these ‘brouettes’ which are little more than steel drums cut in two and fixed on a set of wheels).

Pruning is a vital, albeit rather tedious, part of vineyard management. Each and every individual vine has to be pruned by hand and with up to 8,000 plants per hectare it takes around 200 hours to finish one hectare. Moreover it’s a task that demands quite a bit of skill and experience, so much so in fact that you have to be trained, pass an exam and get a certificate before you can be let loose on the vines. That’s because correct pruning plays an important part in controlling the yield of the vines and because, for each different grape varietal, there’s a specific method of pruning.

Most of the off-cuts are burned in the vineyards although a certain proportion is taken away to be ground down into a mulch to be used again on the soil. It’s a scene that has been pretty much unchanged for decades.

However where there is tradition and habit, entrepreneurial people can always find a new opportunity. A few years ago a young man by the name of Alexandre Hénin was struck not only by the tremendous waste of wood, but also by an idea for a new business: one for which the raw material would be free.

He now runs a company that collects the off-cuts from the vineyards, thereby providing the vigneron with a free service and saving the vigneron lots of time – the vigneron even gets a small payment if his vines are organic or bio-dynamic - and then Alexandre sorts and sells the wood for industrial fuel, barbeque fuel, carving into decorations and even, thanks to the polyphenols in the wood, for medicinal use.

It’s a novel initiative and one that underlines the huge steps that have been taken in Champagne over the past few years to radically improve environment management. I wonder if anyone will come up with an alternative for the white vans?

There are very few itinerant distillers left in Champagne these days - very few in the whole of France for that matter - but today I was lucky enough to meet one in the village of Damery.

This one is owned and operated by a M. Fontaine who turned out to be jovial and chatty and more than willing to tell me a little about his still which he travels with throughout Champagne and Alsace.

Any surplus wine that a champagne maker has that is not fit for turning into champagne can be taken to the distiller who then, for a fee, turns it into alcohol which is returned to the wine maker who can then use it to make Ratafia ( grape juice fortified with alcohol to produce a sweet aperitif drink of about the same strength as sherry).

Of course the entire process is strictly regulated by the Customs - M. Fontaine has to account for the precise volume of wine he recieves and the volume of alcohol produced, but he also has to note the registration number of the vehicle in which the wine/ alcohol is transported by the wine maker. What's more the Customs men can come at any moment to check the records.

The still itself has seen a good few years work, but it seems to be operating perfectly. Not perhaps the most efficient and technologically advanced set-up but it's good that some of the traditional practices can survive in 21st century.

A New Dawn For The Aube

The word ‘aube’ in French means ‘dawn’ in English and it’s also the name of the southernmost region of the Champagne region. So far, so straightforward, but this area of Champagne is also referred to as La Côte des Bar.

You may not have heard either name and it’s true that the region is much less famous than the more northerly parts of Champagne around Reims and Epernay, yet slowly but surely people who appreciate great champagne are sitting up and taking notice of what’s happening in the south and its reputation is growing fast - a new dawn is certainly breaking.

A long, long time ago…

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but even if you have never heard of The Aube, it has always been there. Geologically speaking it is the oldest part of Champagne whose formation dates back to the Jurassic era over 145 million years ago whereas the more chalky northern parts of Champagne are mere youngsters dating from the Late Cretaceous era that came some 40 - 80 million years afterwards.

Geographically too the Aube is separate from the rest of Champagne and lies a good hour and half’s drive south of Reims. In fact the Aube is much closer to Chablis than to the rest of Champagne: it’s just 30 kilometres or so from the heart of the Aube vineyards southwest to Chablis whereas it’s at least three times as far to Reims in the north.

These two facts explain why the soil too is quite different. In the Aube the soil is a mixture of clay and limestone called Kimmeridgean clay whereas further north one finds a much more chalky soil.

Unwelcome and unnoticed

Given these differences it is perhaps not surprising that in the early years of the 20^th century when the boundaries of the Champagne region were being defined, the Aube was at first excluded. The grape growers in and around the town of Ay felt so strongly about this that in 1911 they rioted in the streets, one of their aims being to prevent the champagne houses buying grapes from the Aube. Their efforts failed however and it’s just as well that they did because today, with some 8,000 hectares of vineyards, the Aube represents almost 25% of the entire Champagne region.

Nevertheless for many years the Aube has passed almost entirely under the radar of the outside world, although not of the large champagne houses who long ago recognised the area as the source of large quantities of good quality grapes. The prices too were attractive to the major houses because, with very few well-known brands in the area to champion their cause and raise the flag for the Aube, grape prices remained modest.

A land of rivers

La Côte des Bar, (as the Aube is also called) has two constituent parts: west and east , situated on the slopes overlooking the two main rivers of the region, the Seine and the Aube, and their many tributaries. The western part is La Barséquanais centered on the town of Bar-sur-Seine and the eastern part is La Bar-sur-Aubois centered on the town of Bar-sur-Aube. (see map below)

Some commentators also include in the Aube the 200 hectares of vines around the village of Montgueux several tens of kilometres to the north-west near the town of Troyes, but because the soil there dates from a different geological era and because Montgueux is planted almost entirely with Chardonnay it seems to me to be more logical to consider Montgueux as separate.

You have to suffer for your art

Rivers are an ever present feature of the landscape in the Aube which is criss-crossed with vales and valleys at many angles. The slopes are not steep however and this allows excellent exposure to the sunshine which is slightly more abundant than in the north of Champagne and surely contributes to the quality of the wines. Yet the climate is not always mild, indeed La Côte des Bar seems to have more than its fair share of extreme weather conditions, both hot and cold. This, together with the soil which in some places is extremely stony and difficult to till, means that it can be a struggle growing vines and making champagne here, but as some of the local vignerons will tell you with a wry smile “you sometimes have to suffer to make something of beauty”.

In an area so close to, and with the same soil as, Chablis where the focus is very much on Chardonnay you’d expect the same to be true in La Côte des Bar, but in fact over 80% of the vines are Pinot Noir. This is perhaps due to the demands of the large brands who sourced their supplies from this area and were attracted by the combination of full, fruity flavour plus the slightly lighter, fresher and softer taste that they found in the Pinot Noirs here as compared to those from the more northerly vineyards.

A new dawn

Starting in the 1930s a few pioneering entrepreneurs started to build their business in the Aube. Fleury and larger concerns such as Drappier and Devaux began to make their mark, yet still the Aube remained very much a sleepy backwater, but since the 1970s and particularly in the last 10 years or so there’s been a noticeable upsurge in activity such that the number of small top quality champagne makers is growing from a gentle trickle into a significant river.

Vouette et Sorbée, Dosnon et Lepage, Serge Mathieu and Cédric Bouchard already have quite a following, but behind them are coming a host of other great names to discover

Take Jérôme Coessens for example. The family owns just one plot yet this hasn’t stopped Jérôme from producing 6 different champagnes. This has been possible thanks to an exhaustive analysis of the soil at different levels on the slope. This is the notion of terroir carried to the extreme: one village , Ville-sur-Arce, one plot, called Largillier, one micro-climate, one grape variety, Pinot Noir.

Rémy Massin in the same village is another master of Pinot Noir and it’s also a member of the very exclusive and prestigious Club Trésors de Champagne.

Lionel Carreau is in the nearby village of Celles-sur-Ources. The Carreau family also still cultivates small quantities of the traditional, and now rare, Pinot Blanc. Their champagne was recently selected by the discerning buyers of Marks & Spencer so if you live in England you can give yourself a treat with a bottle of their Cuvée Préambulles.

Olivier Horiot in the picturesque village of Les Riceys Bas goes one further and cultivates 7 different grapes varietals: the classic varietals Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier, plus Arbanne, Pinot Blanc, Petit Meslier and Pinot Gris, the last 4 of which, to many people’s surprise, are still authorised in Champagne.

It’s a pity that there’s no space to include the many other up and coming young brands in this half- forgotten corner of Champagne, but from this brief list it’s clear that the Aube is a hive of activity, creativity and of quality too. It’s a large and increasingly important area of Champagne that is just waiting for you to discover.