What is 'Grower Champagne'?
And, what isn't...?
Moussé Fils in Cuisles, in the Marne Valley
‘Grower Champagne’. A term that seems, on the surface, to provide a neat way of separating out producers whose wines are made only from their own vineyards. Champagne’s governing body, the C.I.V.C., actually divides producers into ‘houses’, which buy in grapes and base wine, and ‘growers’ when it publishes statistics on sales and exports. Neat and tidy, isn’t it?
On the ground, though, the picture gets a little blurry. Consider Louis Roederer’s Blanc de Blancs on one hand, and one from a small independent grower in Avize on the other. Both wines come from 100% estate-owned vineyards, processed at the property. Is a house making a grower champagne, then? It’s hard to argue otherwise. Yes, Roederer are well-known for their extremely high percentage of estate-owned vineyards, but there are other négociant houses that make wines solely from their own holdings (such as Taittinger’s Folies de la Marquetterie). What, in concrete terms, really separates these wines other than the size of the business?
Perhaps ‘grower’ is shorthand, then; but for what, exactly? Maybe it is about size. Or an ethos? Family or independent ownership? Moussé Fils in Cuisles is a producer most would consider a grower, although the letters after their name now read ‘NM’ - négociant-manipulant. In search of novel ways to expand in the face of a tightly-locked land market in Champagne, Cédric Moussé simply approached the owners of nearby parcels of land he was interested in and offered to both take over the viticulture, and buy the grapes. “The guys in the village actually like it; they like having a local looking after their vines, and they like the fact that their grapes end up in a product with a local identity”, explains Julie Daviaux as she takes us around the vineyards. “Everyone is happy.”
In this case, the end result is an independent, family-owned Champagne producer, working to a high standard in the vineyards and making wines with a distinct local identity. Yet these are not, technically, ‘grower’ champagne. Moussé Fils is classified as an N.M. because of these purchase agreements, and the Champagne authorities will put them down as a ‘house’ when compiling their statistics. More and more growers are taking the same, or similar paths.
There is one more quirk that demonstrates how blunt Champagne’s own classification system can be - the R.Cs., or Récoltant-Coopérateurs. At almost every junction in every village in Champagne there are neat sets of arrows pointing to row upon row of producers whose names are unfamiliar even to the most dedicated of bubbleheads. Many of these will be R.Cs. Co-operatives are a quiet, but hugely influential part of the Champagne machinery, often serving as the chief means for many of the small growers - who, let’s not forget, might be dentists, teachers, builders, all with small family plots of land that are managed for them - to commercialise their grapes. Récoltant-Coopérateurs bring their grapes to the Co-op, who then bottle some of the Co-op’s wine (which includes grapes from other growers) and sell it back to the grower under their own label. The rest of the wine is sold on. These Co-Op bottled wines are classified as ‘grower champagnes’ by the C.I.V.C., despite the grapes in the bottle not all coming from the domaine on the label. Go figure, as they say.
I met with Arnaud Moreau in Bouzy, who runs his family business alongside a bed and breakfast in the village. His wife and daughter strolled past us as we sat in the neatly turned-out garden, returning from a riding lesson. The guests, sat under a shady pergola behind us, seemed more than content with a larger tasting than they were expecting as Arnaud cracked open mature wines from his father’s stocks - stocks which he freely admits they never put enough effort into selling. The wines were good, made with care by the Co-Op, plush but balanced, affordable and approachable.
Moreau explained that are three co-operatives in Bouzy who, between them, take in the lion’s share of the harvest (theirs is also part of Union Champagne, the ‘Co-Op of Co-Ops’). Much of what he grows end up at Piper and Charles Heidsieck. I asked Arnaud whether it was difficult to push for improvements in the vineyards when the Co-Operative is simply pressing everyone’s grapes together. “Yes. Everyone has to agree on certification otherwise we cannot use it. I am always pushing hard…but not everyone agrees.” Union Champagne reported just 11.5% of its harvest certified sustainable (HVE/VDC) in 2019. Elsewhere, amongst the serious Récoltants-Manipulants, these certifications have become a bare minimum.
This dynamic means Arnaud’s yearning to have wines from his vines alone became an itch he needed to scratch. For the last three vintages he has been paying the Co-Op extra to separate out some of his Chardonnay for a Blanc de Blancs. It is, unsurprisingly, the most characterful wine in the range. The economic equation is hard to make sense of, though. “I would love to do it every year. But in Champagne you can make a lot of a new wine before you sell any!”. Commercial caution means none will be made this year.
The more time you spend in Champagne, the more you realise how interconnected it all is. The paths from grapes to wine can seem convoluted, opaque even. Perhaps, though, this complexity is part of Champagne’s resilience. Part of its astuteness, learnt by years of instability, part of its flexibility, borne of a fickle climate. Grower Champagne may be a hard dictionary definition to write. Wherever it ends up, though, the growers themselves are there at the start, clear as day.