Grower Champagne’s New Guard

by David Baer

The Grower Champagne revolution has been won, thanks to the outstanding work of grower-producers, who have steadily been reclaiming their family plots from being sold to the big Negociant houses, in order to cultivate top-quality wines of place and distinction (as well as people like Terry Theise, Champagne et Villages’ Paul & Francoise Couvreur, and wine writer Andrew Jeffords, who have all championed their efforts).  Now there is a new perspective on small production terroir-focussed Champagne.  Anselme Selosse, who took over his family’s Champagne estate in 1980, came of age at a time when the Champagne industry was famously, and pervasively, indifferent to fruit quality. A few big producers called the shots, and small growers wielded little power. Nowhere else in France were “brands” so dominant, with fruit bought and sold as a commodity, and with the town of origin as the sole determinant of price. In this system, growers had no incentive for lower yields, or labor-intensive organic viticulture, and vineyard work generally was abysmal.

It took a different perspective to understand what was wrong, and Anselme was the one to provide it.  He had studied oenology not in Champagne, but in Burgundy, where he was introduced to such greats as Coche-Dury, Lafon and Leflaive. There he also learned the kind of commitment needed to produce profound, individualistic wines from great terroirs.  Returning to his father’s estate, he dramatically reduced yields and started farming organically. Working with his wife Corinne, he adopted ideas that were starting to become accepted in other parts of France but were still considered heretical by Champagne’s establishment. Perhaps Anselme’s most important insight was that to make profound Champagne, you must start with a great wine for the base. He is one of the world’s most profound thinkers about the relationship between healthy soils and the wines that spring from them. With low yields and fastidious viticulture, he is able to harvest fruit that is not only Champagne’s most physiologically ripe, but also its most expressive.

But Selosse is not alone.  He has taught and inspired a new generation of grower-producers to think and work differently.  Triage represents many of this new guard: Cedric Bouchard, Jacques Lassaigne, Larmandier-Bernier, DeSousa, as well as Jerome Prevost, Bertrand Gautherot (Vouette et Sorbée) and Ullysse Colin all with new releases due in early 2009.