French Wine: Guide to the Champagne Wine Region in France

Located in the northeast of France, Champagne is the closest winemaking region to Paris. In 1911, attempts to define the boundaries of the Champagne region led to riots in Aube and Marne. Finalized in 1927, the boundaries of the Champagne wine region include vineyards in the administrative departments of Marne, Aisne, Seine-et-Marne, and Aube.

The best vineyards in Champagne are located on slopes of white chalk hills that provide good drainage and require frequent fertilization with compost. Winters are cold, which can make growing difficult. As a result, wines are typically non-vintage (wines from multiple years that are blended) and made with up to three different grape varieties from a number of different villages.

Champagne has been home to winemaking since at least the fifth century. For most of the region’s history, the wines made in Champagne were still—not sparkling—reds. In the winter, these early red wines would often stop fermenting in the bottle, starting up again in the spring when temperatures rose. This second fermentation created carbon dioxide buildup that would sometimes cause the bottles to explode.

While winemakers in Champagne tried to avoid this hazard, the peculiar bubbly wine became popular with the royal court in the early 1700s. By the nineteenth century, Champagne houses like Veuve Clicquot figured out how to control the carbonation process to create the Champagne we drink today.

Sparkling wine is made around the world, but Champagne only comes from Champagne, France, according to the Comité Champagne, which comprises 16,000 growers and 320 Champagne houses. For a wine to be considered Champagne, it must not only come from the region, but must be made in the méthode champenoise, or traditional method. This process can be roughly broken down into six steps:

1. 1. Primary fermentation: The first part of the Champagne production process is to make an uncarbonated, highly acidic, low-alcohol wine. The grapes grown in Champagne, a northern region defined by a cold and dark climate, tend to be high in acid and low in sugar, which is perfect for this first step. Each Champagne maison buys grapes from many small growers across the Champagne region and vinifies them separately. Twenty percent of each vintage is reserved for blending with future wines. This older wine can add depth, compensate for a poor year, and help kick-start the secondary fermentation that makes Champagne bubbly.
2. 2. Assemblage: The cellarmaster blends the various wines from the previous step—as many as 30 to 60 different wines—to create a wine that is consistent with the house’s style. Assemblage is the key to creating Champagne that tastes the same year after year so consumers know what to expect.
3. 3. Tirage and secondary fermentation: Winemakers pour the blended wine into bottles with a little sugar and yeast (a solution called the liqueur de tirage), then leave it to ferment for a period of months. This secondary fermentation increases the wine’s alcohol content by about one-and-a-half percent and traps carbon dioxide in the wine. This carbon dioxide releases in the form of bubbles when you eventually pop open the bottle.
4. 4. Aging: After the secondary fermentation, the wine ages on its lees, the dead yeast from the fermentation process. This is what gives Champagne its unique toasty, brioche-like notes. Winemakers remove the lees after months or years of aging. As the wine ages, winemakers will occasionally rotate each bottle a few degrees until the lees collect in the neck of each bottle, making their removal easier.
5. 5. Disgorgement: Called degorgement in French, this is when winemakers remove the lees from the neck of the bottle, so the finished wine will be clear and free of sediment.
6. 6. Dosage: Dosage is a mix of still wine reserved from the first fermentation and sugar, which is added to the Champagne. Bottles are then sealed with the traditional mushroom-shaped cork.

Sparkling rosé wines can be achieved through a period of skin contact, but in Champagne rosé is typically made by adding a small amount of red wine to a white blend.

Champagne is unique among French wine regions in that it only has one appellation, the Champagne AOC. There are a few different ways to identify different types of Champagne wines. There are 320 crus, 17 of which are grand crus and 42 of which are premier crus.

Champagne is also identified by prestige cuvées—expensive Champagnes given names by their houses, including Dom Pérignon from Moët & Chandon; Grand Cordon from Mumm; Blason de France from Perrier-Jouët; and Comtes de Champagne from Taittinger. Champagne is considered the first region to achieve this kind of brand recognition.

A very small number of wines produced in Champagne are not bubbly. These are sold under the appellation Coteaux Champenois as still white wines, red wines (such as Bouzy Rouge), and rosés (such as Rosé des Riceys).

In addition to the quality and price of a bottle of Champagne, most tasters want to know how dry or sweet the wine is. Champagne is labeled with identifiers for levels of residual sugar (RS), which indicate the wine’s level of sweetness. There are six common types of champagne, classified by residual sugar:

1. 1. Brut nature, or zéro dosage Champagne is made without added sugar and must have less than three grams of sugar per liter.
2. 2. Extra brut champagne can have anywhere from zero to six grams of sugar per liter.
3. 3. Brut Champagne has less than 12 grams of sugar per liter. This is the most common style of Champagne.
4. 4. Extra dry Champagne has 12 to 17 grams of sugar per liter. Despite its name, extra dry is not the driest style of Champagne—that would be brut nature or extra brut.
5. 5. Sec Champagne has 17 to 32 grams of sugar per liter.
6. 6. Demi-sec Champagne has 32 to 50 grams of sugar per liter.

Three major grapes are grown in Champagne: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay.

1. 1. Pinot Noir is a black grape with white juice, first grown in Burgundy. To preserve the light color for white sparkling wines, the grapes are hand-harvested and special champagne presses are used to extract the light juice. At 38 percent of plantings, this is the most popular grape in Champagne, particularly in the Montagne de Reims and the Côte des Bar subregions.
2. 2. Pinot Meunier is a cold-resistant black grape grown particularly in the Marne Valley. It accounts for 32 percent of plantings. Champagne made exclusively from Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir grapes is known as Blanc de Noirs.
3. 3. Chardonnay is the only white grape grown in Champagne, accounting for 30 percent of plantings. It's mostly grown on the Côte des Blancs. Single-vintage champagne made entirely from the Chardonnay grape is called Blanc de Blancs.

The region of Champagne is comprised of five subregions:

1. 1. Vallée de la Marne (valley of the Marne River), Champagne's westernmost subregion, is home to Pinot Meunier grapes.
2. 2. The Montagne de Reims (the mountain of Reims), in the north of the region near Reims Cathedral, is planted predominantly with Champagne's two red grapes.
3. 3. Côte des Blancs (the hillside of whites), directly south of the Montagne de Reims and near the town of Épernay, is planted mostly with Chardonnay grapes.
4. 4. Côte de Sézanne is mostly planted with Chardonnay and lies directly south of the Côte des Blancs.
5. 5. Côte des Bar is located on the boundary of the Haute-Marne department and the department of Aube, where Pinot Noir dominates. The nearest town is Troyes.

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