If Champagne Grand Crus Were Celebs

Part One - The Montagne de Reims

Firstly, a few changes at Six Atmospheres:

1. Subscriptions are now cheaper. I think we all have a bit of online subscription fatigue - I know I do - so I’ve cut it to £4 a month. Annuals are now £40. I think I’d subscribe to me at that, whereas £6…hmm, that’s almost half of Netflix. And there’s a lot of stuff on Netflix.

2. All the main posts are for paid subscribers only. He giveth with one hand, he taketh away with the other.

3. Instead of free posts there will be an occasional free email for the whole list. I won’t be sending out the paid newsletters with ‘teasers’ for non paying subscribers - I imagine these are a bit annoying, although Substack is very keen to encourage me to keep doing it.

Now, onto this week’s topic - Champagne’s ‘Grand Cru’ villages.

The terms ‘Premier Cru’ and ‘Grand Cru’ don’t mean the same in Champagne as they do in Burgundy. They’re looser, vaguer and not as helpful (here’s a piece I wrote for Sip! on why). There are, though, seventeen villages whose entire vineyard surface is designated ‘Grand Cru’. These are found on the Montagne de Reims, in the Côte des Blancs and the Grande Vallée of the Marne river.

Even though each village has a wide range of expositions, soils and characters, they do also tend to have an overriding identity (which is often clear at the Maisons when they present base wines from a particular village, often blended from a number of plots and sources which erases plot-to-plot variation). Having posted an instagram story on a wine from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger which I described as a-bit-Robert-de-Niro, I thought it would be entirely sensible to assign celebs (actors, musicians and sports personalities) to all the other Grand Crus, too.

I have thought about this far too hard, really. But if you need to know which Champagne village is definitely Roger Federer, or 80s rock one hit wonders Journey, or Simone Biles….tune in.