The wine of Champagne was first mentioned in the history books in 496 when Bishop Saint Remi baptised Clovis, King of the Franks in Reims Cathedral. The region’s close proximity to Paris promoted its early economic success but also put the villages and vineyards in the path of marching armies on their way to the French capital. Today Champagne grapes are sourced from more than a hundred different villages and cultivated by some 18,000 growers with a strictly controlled 34,000 hectares in a very marginal wine producing area (50’N), where the average daily temperature during the growing season is 10.2′. Interestingly the major Champagne houses own just 10% of…

Champagne is the most famous wine region in France Let’s start by talking about location, location, location. It’s cold, it’s wet, it’s at the absolute extremity of feasibility for grape growing and, by the way, the crop will most likely fail on average once every three years. Yes, we’re referring to the magical ‘C’ word – that very special climactically challenged tiny corner of North Eastern France, less than an hour away from Paris, that is devoted to making one of the world’s most enduring luxury products. Fortuitously, grapevines are hardy plants, requiring only a mean temperature of 10ºC to function, which is just as well because the average daily…

It wasn’t just the Romanovs (Russian Tsars) who liked their champagne sweet – until the end of the 19th century, virtually all champagnes were sweet, which suited the producers just fine because the added sugar masked any excess acidity and harshness in their wines and meant they could sell champagnes that were only one or two years old without a problem. The first ‘dry’ style of champagne was launched in the UK market by Madame Pommery in 1874 but considered revolutionary, and it was only after World War I that drier styles of champagne started replacing sweet champagne throughout the world. Even today, many sweet champagnes will often be made…