France - Champagne & sparkling wines

Including features, guides and blogs about Champagnes de Vignerons (special supplement): Barfontarc, Lamoureux, Lozey, Goerg, Gimonnet-Gonet, Legret, Allouchery, Chemin, Trichet, Autréau, Michez and Delabaye. Plus: Drappier, Dumangin, Louvel Fontaine, Oudinot, Louis Chaurey, Franck Bonville, Pierre Gimonnet, Tesco Premier Cru, Gosset, Bollinger...

Champagnes de Vignerons special supplement (Sept 2015)

Vineyard on 'La Montagne de Reims'

From champagnesdevignerons.com

What's the difference then between Champagnes de Vignerons, wine-growers' Champagnes to coin a slightly clunky English translation, and the 'usual' kind we find around everywhere, i.e. big brands from big houses or own-labels from Champagne co-op wineries..? Buy my 15-page special PDF report on a dozen independent Champagne houses for just £3 (c. $4.50 or €4) featuring many bubbly reviews of these tasty producers:
Côte des Bar region: Champagnes de Barfontarc, Jean-Jacques Lamoureux and de Lozey. Côte des Blancs region: Champagnes Paul Goerg, Gimonnet-Gonet and Legret et Fils. Montagne de Reims region: Champagnes Allouchery-Perseval, André Chemin and Pierre Trichet. Vallée de la Marne region: Champagnes Autréau–Lasnot, La Villesenière/Claude Michez and Maurice Delabaye et Fils.

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Champagne Drappier IV 'Quattuor' (June 2015)

"Here's a note on a very tasty and unusual (and rather expensive alas) special cuvée made by the perhaps less well-known brand Drappier (outside of France at least)..."

Champagne Louvel Fontaine Brut NV from 'whites of the moment' Feb 2015.

Champagne Dumangin (Nov 2014).

Oudinot Brut Vintage 2005 from 'wines of the mo' Feb 2014.

Champagne & sparkling wines festive fizz (Dec 2013) featuring nice bottles that crossed my path: Cava, Prosecco, the Cape, England, Champagne and sparkling Shiraz.

A couple of Champagnes of the moment: Champagne Louis Chaurey Brut (M&S) and Premier Cru Champagne (Tesco) (New Year's Eve 2012, updated with super-duper Croser Sparkling from Aus).

Champers vs English fizz: Pierre Gimonnet et Fils and Gusbourne Estate, Kent (Sept 2011).

Yawn, yet another luxury special edition...: Champagne Gosset (Dec 2009).

Pass the Bolly or "if it's the 85 you were expecting me...": Bollinger feast including some fab old vintages (May 2004).

You'll find more words about Champers too by doing a search for Champagne (link does that)...

As for other French fizz: Crémant de Bourgogne which you'll find there on my Burgundy page and HERE about Simonnet-Febvre (April 2009).

Limoux fizz (May 2012) from the Languedoc 'highlands', which was updated in my Languedoc special 2015 plus there's this too: Delmas Crémant de Limoux (Jan 2010).

Fizz of the moment: Royal Seyssel Brut: "Obscure yet pretty sparkling wine region in Savoy on the way up to skiing country in the French Alps..." (Sept 2010)

Champagne trip June 2001

The Eurostar cuts a pastel-painted blur through the spacious rural canvass like an Impressionist on speed; it’s only really when you get to Paris that it sinks in you’ve arrived in northern France, without the more customary touchdown. At about an hour and a half’s drive from the reluctant-to-leave capital, Champagne is the nearest and easiest French wine region for us to visit. And it’s pretty, green, warm in the summer, suffused with rolling hills…and they make Champagne there, so lots of good reasons.

Épernay, smaller and less lively than the region’s other main town Reims, wouldn’t, under normal circumstances, endear itself to you. Apart from an attractively French medium-grand square, it’s a little non-descript. But it is home to many famous Champagne Houses such as Moët et Chandon, Nicolas Feuillate, Pol Roger and Mercier (my host on this trip), most of them lined up along Avenue de Champagne. Luckily we’ve been put up in the subtly flash country hotel La Briqueterie just a few kilometres outside.

That night we dine at the swanky restaurant Royal Champagne (03 26 52 87 11) near Champillon, also owned by the LVMH group (as is Mercier). The taxi, admittedly a comfy Merc, comes to £17 for a short ride; now I know why they say Champagne is one of the wealthiest areas of France. Predictably we drink fizz throughout the meal with different Mercier styles to go with each course, and on the whole, they work quite well. Their 1995 Vintage – elegant and dry with toasty biscuit flavours balanced by fresh pear fruit – proves a sound match with foie gras, whereas the delicious Rosé Brut – lovely mousse and strawberry/raspberry fruit – just about manages to keep up with a very tasty lobster and mushroom gratin. With the aptly titled chariot de fromages (I’ve never seen such a vast, olfactorily-challenging selection of cheeses in a restaurant; 'trolley' doesn't do it frankly) we drink Rosé Demi-Sec – rounder, sweeter and a tad bland – which is OK with the milder ones but otherwise overwhelmed.

The bright morning starts with us stomping around in a high-ranking vineyard up in the hills near Aÿ, to admire flowering Chardonnay vines and the view down to the river Marne and across the valley. Then back to Épernay for a tour in Mercier’s gigantic underground cellars (18km of tunnels, work started in 1871 and took 6 years) by laser-guided ‘train’, where most of the 50 million bottles are peacefully ageing. Bottling lines are normally impressive but dull; however, the automated operation at a large House like Mercier is fascinating, for a wine anorak at least. Here you see the whole process from dégorgement (removal of the ‘lees’ sediment by quickly freezing the necks of inverted bottles and ejecting by pressure) to cork and capsule in one hit, a robotic hive of noise and smells.

Mercier seems very geared up to visits, as are no doubt all the high-profile producers: ring 03 26 51 22 22. For any others the Champagne Bureau in London (020 7915 4788) is a good place to start.

Finally, we tasted through the range with Monique Charpentier, oenologist of 30 years with the company having also worked on Dom Pérignon and Ruinart and promoted to Chef de Cave just over a year ago. She’s the first woman to hold this senior position, something that shouldn’t be a big deal nowadays but the people at Mercier are justifiably proud of in still pretty conservative Champagne. Oh, and just enough time for a swift and diverse (although rather salty) seafood lunch at Table Kobus (03 26 51 53 53) – accompanied by a glass of the complex but quaffable Cuvée Eugène – then snoozing back to Paris.