Taste of Villedommange grapes

Pinot Noir grapes from Villedommange, Montagne de Reims.

On the 59th edition of the big yearly exhibition of "a little bit of everything for the farmers" in the regional capital Chalons-en-Champagne we had the chance to get a first taste of the grapes of 2005.

The people of the Clos de la Chapelle - an association of 23 independant vignerons from the village Villedommange in Montagne de Reims - supplied the grapes - green Chardonnay and blue Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier - and made sure they got pressed the old style way leaving it to the visitors to have a taste of the new must.


Draw it yourself must on the market in Chalons-en-Champagne.

A nice little push for the profession, which at the same time gave vice-chairman Denis Mahut, Clos de La Chapelle, a possibility to talk about the outlook of the vendange 2005. It augurs well, and with an expected output of around 18.000 kilos per hectare the Villedommange expectations are in the high end of the general average of the region.

Denis Mahut goes on, that he expects to begin to harvest the grapes around September 19th, writes regional newspaper l'Union.


Publicity the tall way in Chalons-en-Champagne.

On top of the grapes the vignerons of Villedommange also demonstrated the usage of old equipment on Saturday.

Amongst them one of the more spectacular manual processes - the dégorgement - where the temporary cork on the champagnebottle is removed together with the leftovers of the yeast and replaced by the final cork.

The foire in Chalons-en-Champagne thus an excellent opportunity to experience this rare, manual skill.

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Halfway we think

The coop has its heyday of the year these days. 

We are now halfway through the grapes, that is theoretically anyway, because it is not easy to know exactly, where the middle is, since the plants not carry the same amount of grapes. Also the length of the rows vary, they are even in three geographically different locations. On top of that the quality of the grapes vary. This year is is in general high, most of the grapes are pretty mature and only a few are diseased or rotten.

Now we have stopped completely harvesting the less nice grapes, and also those at the bottom of the plant or the most difficult ones squeezed inbetween branches, eachother or the metalthread are left. Also even foreman Gerard says the best ones are at the bottom, because the flowering starts here, which makes them the oldest.

On this the fourth day of the harvest we thus don’t follow the rules from the ministry too closely anymore. Maybe because there exist several different interpretations of it. Some says, it means you must cut all grapes even to leave them on the ground. Others say you must cut grapes in each row but not necessarily take everything. Nobody seems to have read the text themselves.

Whether you must interpretate in one way or the other, one thing is sure. A man from another village in the neighbourhood has according to the harvest gossip – we got the story tonight from cousin Jean-Michels wife - had four rows harvested by somebody else, which was definitely a mistake. In years with too few grapes to harvest it may happen that somebody will steal some of your grapes straight from the plant in the night or try to get grapes from other areas to deliver as his own at the press. This is why you these days see extraordinarily many policecars around the roads. Your risk is to be caught and loose the license to grow wine or your living for most people here. But years like this one where everything – however you understand it – is to cut, only people with very limited brains would actually hunt for grapes in the neighbours fields.

For the time being we stay where we are. Geographically and kilowise. 6200 green Chardonnay-grapes were shippes of too the presses in Vertus today, the same amount as yesterday. Even the muscles seem to be getting used to the new times with fysical work on your knees or like me sitting on the bum, eight hours every day.

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Vendange around the corner

Chardonnay at Villers-Marmery in Montagne de Reims.

The sun shines, the grapes mature, and the vendange in Vertus is about to start around September the 15th. The preliminary exercizes have begun in August:

Technicians check the sugarcontent of the grapes with an interval of few days.

The compulsory story about the condition of the grapes in the departments Marne, Aube and Aisne has been published in the local paper, l'Union.

And Gerard, who organizes the vendange in our family, regularly contacts Normandy, which apart from viking heritage and camembert also houses a group of people, who year after year travel to Soulières to pick grapes with us.

Now, let's have a more detailed view into the current condition of things, while these last parameters slip into place.

Fine grapes
The grapes augur well. The berries are big and pretty and in our parcels without disease as well. Which is identical with the overall situation in the major part of Champagne. Mainly in the departements Aube and Aisne the grapes some places have the disease mildew, caused by a lot of rain this summer.

The amount of grapes is ample even it is not extraordinary like last year. With estimated 14.000 kilo of grapes per hectare there is enough for everybody to deliver their quota of 12.00 kilos per hectare.


Since July the wine has used the power on maturation, Loisy-en-Brie July.

Currently we wait to get the "go" from the CIVC (Comité Interprofessionel du vin de Champagne). An army of techniciens from this common association of the champagne industry is currently working all over the area.

Each three-four days since August 22nd they have measured the balance of sugar and acidity of the grapes in all villages in the area (around 3-400). When the balance between sugar and acidity is satisfactory, the vendange may begin.

On the professionnal part of the homepage of the CIVC we can check the current state of the grapes in each deparment, and it most certainly begins to look good in Marne.

Dato	Chardonnay	Pinot Meunier	Pinot Noir
22/8	5,85 (5,9%)	6,03 (5,9%)	6,40 (6,1%)
25/8	7,22 (6,4%)	7,16 (6,2%)	7,36 (6,4%)
29/8	9,20 (7,3%)	8,71 (6,9%)	9,17 (7,1%)

The grapes are ready, when the CIVC-measurement of acidity/sugar passes 10, and the alcohol potebtial (in %) passes 9.

Even the numbers cover big differences between villages, even between parcels, the numbers still show, that the grapes at the moment mature very fast. The significance of the last week with the most pretty indian summer sunshine imaginable, can probably not be exaggerated.

Furthermore the occurence rate of botrytis is followed carefully. If the frequency of this disease exceeds a certain limit, the vendange will start without considering any other parameters.

Measurements of sugar
A grape - in fact any fruit - is mature, when the sun has transformed all the acidity to sugar. The amount of sugar determines the final amount of alcohol, if you consider to let the must ferment to wine. Which is most certainly our plan.

Since we neither want too much alcohol - sorry dear, it is not all a matter of the more the better - nor too little - all right, there is a minimum as well - you have to harvest the grapes in order to obtain the optimum balance. And when it comes to champagne, that moment is a bit before the grapes are fully mature. This is due to the fact, that the wine ferments twice, and the second fermentation contributes a bit to the final percentage of alcohol as well.

The measuring is rather detailed. To help the do-it-yourself-measurers the CIVC proposes, how you may select your fields in order to get a representative result. You need grapes from both the parcels that mature early and late, from the old plants and the young and from your different types of soil. From each parcel you pick at least 1,2 kg - between 15 and 20 grapes twice per week in the period and in a way, so you take only one grape per plant and grapes from all levels in the rows.


Preparations, the boxes for the grapes are ready.

We leave this very accurate measuring to the CIVC, and the decision of when to start to the cooperative, since we cannot start anyway, until the coop is manned to press the grapes. And with around 230 owners with wine all over Côte de Blancs they have to stick pretty much to the average to find a period, where as many grapes as possible peak.

The pickers
The same considerations do not include the pickers. They arrive, when the vendange begins, and since the date is not fixed until a couple of weeks in advance, they have to be rather flexible.

Through the years it has become increasingly common to hire a team for the job. Gipsies and more and more people from Eastern Europe arrive with their mobile homes to do the job, and they double the amount of inhabitants in the little villages in the week of the vendange. In France every city is obliged to have a space where the "travelling people" - as the gipsies are commonly designated - can stay.


Sun on the last day of the vendange in 2004.

We still harvest the oldfasioned way. This means, that a group of pickers get food and lodging at the farm as a part of their wages. They come from Normandy and iether have holiday or are unemployed. Here in Verzy, in the heart of the wine of Champagne, the locals that do not own the wine themselves, very often work with it. Coming up is picking and dealing with the grapes.

One of the older ones must be our neighbour. She just told me, that she will have her 50 years jubilee this year, picking grapes. Think about that. This is my second vendange, and I am looking very much forward to do it.

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News August 2005

04.08.2005: On top of Kentucky Fried Chicken there must also be Cristal champagne - top of the range from Louis Roederer - in the picnic-basket to keep rapper Eminem happy on tour, writes the British paper Daily Mirror. This kind of gossip news is also very good and absolutely free publicity for champagne. Not the least drinking habits of American pop- and rockstars have boosted the demand. Since 1990 the sales of champagne is up with 54 percent.

10.08.2005: Moët & Chandon has put 15 hectares of vineyards in the department of Aisne up for sale. The prestigious producer wants to sell its Pinot Meunier, because this grape is not part of the blend of the Dom Pérignon champagne, which Moët & Chandon wants to concentrate on. The price per hectare is around 650.000 euro or around 4,9 million Danish crowns. On top of the vineyard you need a certificate to be a farmer in France as well. To consider, if not already the financial part of starting up as a winegrower has caused you problems.

12.08.2005: LThe farming statistics from Agreste under the French ministry of agriculture confirms what we have been able to see in the vinyards ourselves for at long time. The plants carry less fruits than in 2004, the year that beat all records.

Dato	2004	2005
Aisne	190 (211)	179 (192)
Aube	553 (635)	518 (558)
Marne	2.068 (2.437)	1.899 (2.045)

The unit is 1000 hectolitres and the number covers AOC-wines, that is champagne and a few others from the three departements.

18.08.2005:A banker from an investment bank in Monaco has spend more than 21.000 pounds on expensive champagnes, that he splashed out in a club in London. After the wet night out the banker was charged 15.000 pounds extra for the cleaning. How many of the expensive drops of the Cristal, Dom Pérignon and Cristal Rosé champagnes that were actually drunk, is not known. But this kind of vandalism certainly keeps the gilt-edged name of champagne going. And as a spokesperson from the London-club says, that kind of thing happens all the time in Monaco and St Tropez. In Champagne that kind of bottles are normally drunk.

31.08.2005: Citizens in the little village Fontaine-sur-Aÿ close to river Marne, have been authorized to put down some of the fruittrees on their côtes to replace them with wine. It is rare though that new land is planted with wine, and since the demand for champagne has grown a lot during the last 10-15 years, the demand for soil has risen equally, currently almost touching the skies. It is the
CIVC (Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, a body of both winegrowers and winemakers), that decides any extensions considering climate, geology and the age of the applicant.

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News July 2005

01.07.2005: Pernod Ricard has received a "go" from the American competition authorities to take over the British group, Allied Domecq. The Americans thus follow the EU, that last weeek accepted the take-over. Now the Canadians has their say too.

04.07.2005: 99,8 percent of the shareholders of the group Allied Domecq voted yes to be taken over by the French Pernod Ricard group, that with the purchase moves to become the secondbiggest group of wine and spirits worldwide. Price: 10,7 billion euros.

08.07.2005: Winegrowers have dozens of strangely looking equipment and now one more has arrived. The new invention is called Agraflyre, and it could become important in Champagne. The machine can perform the rather intensive manual work of early summer, that consists of raising the threads in the rows, put new stems back behind the threads and put plastic clips to keep the thread together. The system currently works at 150 winegrowers in Champagne and is tested in other big French wineareas and in Spain and Schwitzerland too, writes the regional newspaper l'Union. Read more about how Agraflyre works here

08.07.2005: The chairman of the board of the champagnehouse Laurent-Perrier, Bernard de Nonancourt, continues as rank-and-file member of the board. His successor is Maurice de Kervénoaël. Bernard de Nonancourt has been in front of Laurent-Perrier - based in Tours-sur-Marne - since 1949. The Nonancourt family still owns 56,08 percent of the shares of the company, that apart from Laurent-Perrier itself also comprises the brands Salon, Delamotte, De Castellane, Jeanmaire, Oudinot and Beaumet. Laurent-Perrier is today number three worldwide when it comes to value, not number of bottles.

14.07.2005: The French Ministry of Agriculture has allowed winegrowers in the city Colmar in Alsace to use genetically modified wine. The purpose is to investigate if this kind of wine is more resistant to the disease fanleaf virus, that reduces the yield very much. The organisation Terre et Vin du Monde, with members from Bourgogne, Bordeaux, Spain, Sicity and others, is against the attempt. More about the virus at INRA

28.07.2005: Several of the big champagnehouses have had good sales on minibottles in a young and cool design. In the last year the trendy bottles have sold for a value of five million dollars in the USA, says American poll company AC Nielsen. A growth of 25 percent. Pommery was the first with "Pop", others have followed in the successful footpaths. This summer the very blue and pink minis of Nicholas Feuillatte, One Four, has made it into just about all the magazines. Laurent-Perrier, Heidsieck & Co. and Moët et Chandon have all joined the minitrend.

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Financier wants Taittinger back

The ink is hardly dry on the sales agreement of American Starwood Capitals purchase of the Societé du Louvre, before rumours have it that a new sale is just around the corner.

In yesterdays edition of Le Figaro one of the main players, the Belgian financier Albert Frere, confirms that he considers buying the Taittinger-champagne back. Only weeks after Taittinger, Baccarat-crystals and a hotel-empire were all up for sale because the same Albert Frere wanted his money out of the Societé du Louvre.

Now the financier says, that he with the Peugeot-family, who owned seven percent of the shares in Taittinger before the sale last week, is ready for at new bid on the prestigeous champagnehouse. On top of that the a-family is welcome to join forces, he says. The family has since the sale hinted that it is interested to continue with the champagne. A spokeswoman has to The Times confirmed that the family only sold the champagnebusiness because it was to complicated to split it from the rest of their activities.

The world of big finance may seem as inscrutable as this years sky in july in Champagne.

Another big house, Louis Roederer, is also mentioned as a possible buyer. Pernod Ricard, that recently has bought Allied Domecq and with it also Mumm and Perrier-Jouët and thus is back in Champagne, also examines the possibilities. But like the management of Louis Roederer the manager declines to comment on the speculations.

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Now Taittinger is American

The race for Taittinger is over. Or rather for the entire group, the Societé du Louvre. The american Starwood Capital Group LLC was the one that finally threw the necessary 1,2 billion euro on the table.

The former Franch group comprises apaort from the Taittinger-champagne the luxury-hotel Le Crillon on the Place de la Concorder in the very heart of Paris, 13 other hotels in the same class and the budgethotel chains Campanile and Première Classe. (Why do you just know that when something calls itself "first class" it is anything but?)

Almost straight after its new purchase of the second biggest hotelgroup in Europe, Starwood announced the champagne Taittinger up for sale once again.

The house of Taittinger has existed since Pierre Taittinger in 1931 bought the rather unknown but 200 years old Fourneaux, and later developed it into one of the ten biggest houses with a sales in 2004 of 390.000 boxes.

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First report on vendange is good

Pinot Meunier ved Loisy-en-Brie, juli 2005.

The grapes are pretty. We entirely agree, but it is always great to hear that the authorities in their first, official reports share your humble opinion. After all based on just a few hectares, a tiny drop in the immense sea of wine in this region.

But the CIVC (Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne), the official speaking tube of the united champagnebusiness, describes the average picture at the moment like this:

• Plenty but normal amounts of grapes.
  
• Pretty and wellplaced berries.
  
• Expected vendange between September 15th and 20th.

The vendange 2004 was so extensive, that even retirees could not think of any other vendange to equal the immense quantities seen. This year the wine carries more moderate amounts of grapes.

Average quantities
In average the CIVC expect around 14.000 kilos of grapes per hectare, which is just a little more than necessary, since you are entitled to sell 12.000 kiloes of grapes per hectare of land. Last year the plants carried around 25.000 amazing kilos per hectare.

So far what will develop into this years crop, has made well.

• The dangerous frost in the spring has only killed a very minor part, says the CIVC.
  
• The widespread drought in the spring has only had minor impacts for the wine, that normally does not demand much when it comes to water. The wine has managed with what it could find in the underground chalk layer, that sucks the water like a sponge.

How deep the threats of the summer - different diseases, pests and hailstorms - will dig into the potential, is still to early to talk about.

According to the CIVC mildew has been seen, but not yet on a level that can not be treated. Also botrytis has been observed.


Our Pinot Meunier-grapes at Loisy-en-Brie develops nicely.

Everything can change
Much - not to say all - can still change. The informations from the CIVC only states, what can be said at the moment. A heatwawe at the same level as in 2003 for instance can speed up the date of the vendange with several weeks in a short while.

This first report from Champagne is different from that from the rest of France. There the winegrowers have started to prepare themselves for another huge harvest.

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Lanson up for sale

With 700 spare million euros you could consider to acquire you own house of champagne. Actually the second biggest in the world is now entirely up for sale. The name is Lanson International.

First the bank, Caisse nationale des Caisses, put its 44 percent of the shares up for sale. Next the family Mora joined forces with its majority share of 56 percent as well, so now the interested - and deep-pocketed - buyer can get the whole company.

The price anyway is estimated by the current owners in the light of the estimated price of Taittinger (500 million euros) alså currently up for sale. The major difference between the two companies is that where Taittinger owns 280 hectares of wine, Lanson International buys all its grapes from winegrowers. The family estimates the stocks to about 450 million euros.

A lot of stories on the Lanson-sales has made the management put up a series of meetings for the suppliers, without which Lanson would not have anything to put in their bottles. According to regional newspaper l'Union the responsible managers assured that there will not again be a situation, where the suppliers do not get the payment on time as happened in 2004.

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