Home > Wine Guides > Champagne Guide > Regions & Villages: Champagne Mountain

Regions & Villages

As I expounded in my introduction to this guide to Champagne, most wine regions can be approached from a geographical point of view. Bordeaux, for instance, can be divided into left and right banks, and into communes such as St Julien and St Emilion, which can than be used to establish the style of the wine. For Burgundy it is of course a defining concept, the Côte d'Or and other regions being classified and compartmentalised right down to the individual grand and premier cru vineyards. But for Champagne it isn't part of the marketing machine, as at the most superficial levels at least this is a region which thrives on brands and the mystique of the master blender, the chef de cave, the individual who takes wines from all over the region to consistently blend a house style.

Regionality is important though, and I believe that over the coming years this will become more and more accepted for Champagne. Cross-regional blending may be the norm for the grandes marques, but today these ancient houses must play alongside smaller independent family-run domaines, the 'growers', who source fruit from a much smaller and more well-defined set of vineyards. And if you visit the region, there is no shortage of talk about the different villages of the Montagne de Reims, the Vallée de la Marne, Côtes des Blancs or indeed the Aube; the importance of regionality and terroir is well understood on the shop-floor it seems, even if that message only rarely makes it through onto the label. This and the next section of my guide to Champagne reflect the growing importance of regionality, focusing on the principal viticultural areas around Reims and Épernay, in each case narrowing it down to look at a handful of the best known and most important villages.

Regions & Villages: The Champagne Mountain

The vineyards of Champagne cover in excess of 35000 hectares of France, a sprawling network of vines connecting villages and valleys to the south of Reims, to the east of Paris, in northern France. These vineyards are distributed between five major viticultural regions, an understanding of which is the first step in an appreciation of regionality in Champagne. First up in my account of these five zones de production is the Montagne de Reims - the Champagne Mountain, if you will.

Drive south out of Reims towards Epernay - as I did in the introduction to this guide - and it is over the Montagne de Reims that you must climb. This geological formation which separates these two towns rises to a height of 286 metres, and although at its peak it is covered in thick forest its slopes, both to the south and the north, provide a multitude of favourable sites for viticulture, and naturaly they are covered in a sea of vines (like that illustrated left). Such is its size that in 1848 it was decreed that a tunnel through the mountain would be built to link Reims with Epernay, the track entering the north face near Rilly, and exiting on the south just uphill of Germaine. The excavation of the tunnel and the numerous associated ventilation shafts that were dug, as well as centuries of excavation and quarrying on the surface, afford us a rich knowledge of the evolution and geology of the mountain.

Montagne Terroir

It is, of course, rich in chalk, a type of limestone derived from the deposition of tiny life-forms on the bed of the sea that once covered this region, many millennia ago. With an elevation of the land this chalky sea bed became field, valley and mountain, and it now accounts for the very special terroir that not only gives Champagne much of its character but which also extends west across Chablis and into regions of the Loire, especially around Sancerre, as well as north across the English Channel to the white cliffs of Dover and the South Downs, long-touted as a potentially hot viticultural region. There are two principle types of chalk; the first is belemnite, named for the fossils of the javelin-shaped belemnite cephalopods it contains, long-extinct creatures perhaps best likened to their modern and very distant relatives, squids and cuttlefish. The second is micraster, this type named for the micraster sea urchin. Locals would have us believe the belemnite chalk is superior to the micraster variety, but as the former tends to run up the slopes and the latter along the valleys, this may have as much to do with drainage or aspect as it does with the precise composition of the rock underfoot.

There is more than chalk to the mountain, however, as it also bears layers of clay, sand and sandstone, lignite (a soft and wet fossil fuel, often referred to as brown coal, previously much quarried here) and marl, a mix of clay and limestone. Nevertheless it is chalk that characterises these vineyards, and indeed the Champagne region as a whole. There is no other region that displays its terroir so clearly, and from so far away. Green rows of vines run up and along the hillsides, standing out against the pale yellow-white chalky soil. Where the vineyards are freshly planted the contrast is even more stark, verdant green on brilliant white. It is a remarkable sight.

The Villages of the Montagne de Reims

Champagne has a long-established classification of its villages, the best being ranked as grand cru and the next best premier cru. Little of the detail of this tends to come through onto the label; although it is not unknown for a producer to declare a wine as premier cru or grand cru, an intended declaration of the quality of the fruit they use, the villages concerned are rarely, if ever, mentioned. Nevertheless this classification is of the utmost significance to the growers who intend selling their fruit to the major houses, as the classification - or échelle des crus as it is known - dictates how much they can charge. The grands crus carry an échelle of 100%, whereas the premiers crus range from 90% up to 99%, and the unclassified villages are rated at 80%. These percentages relate to price; when the price of one kilo of grand cru grapes is set each year by the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, those working lesser sites must sell their fruit at a lower price, according to the percentage on their land. Clearly for the top premier cru sites this is only a difference of 1%, but for lesser villages there is a 20% fall, a very significant penalty.

There are 17 grand cru villages in the whole of Champagne, the number having been increased from 12 in 1985. Of these, nine lay on and around the Montagne de Reims, starting with three villages that sit on the plain at the foot of the mountain, to the northeast, on the A4 as it runs out of Reims. These are Puisieuix, Sillery and Beaumont-sur-Vesle. Puisieuix has a mere 18 hectares of vineyard, roughly two-thirds Pinot and one-third Chardonnay. The vineyards sit in a block to the west of the town, surrounded by arable farmland, and they are some of the least significant grand cru vines. Likewise Sillery, a somewhat larger town which lies just to the northeast of Puisieuix, has a somewhat jaded reputation. Today there are about 92 hectares here, and their fame stems from a gigantic 18th-century estate owned by the Maréchale d'Éstrées which took in not only the vineyards of Sillery but also some of neighbouring and somewhat grander villages on the slopes above. It is the reputation of these vineyards that seems to have rubbed off on Sillery. Finally in this alluvial threesome comes Beaumont-sur-Vesle, 25 hectares of vines, principally Pinot Noir, just a little further down the A4 from Sillery. Again, it seems as though the fame of neighbouring villages has been transferred here, as this is another 'lesser' grand cru.

So which are these more famed villages? Take a look up towards the Montagne de Reims and three of them lie before you, the villages nestled up against the edge of the forest, the vineyards radiating out in a fan-like fashion on the slopes below. The first of these three northern-slope villages is Mailly-Champagne with a considerable 270-or-so hectares, dominated by Pinot Noir (about 80%), with a small amount of Chardonnay and an even smaller quantity of Pinot Meunier. Then moving around the slopes to the east, the aspect slowly changing from generally north- to east-facing comes Verzenay, a larger town with a larger vineyard - the largest of all the grands crus in fact - in excess of 400 hectares. As with Mailly this is Pinot-country (90% is Pinot Noir), with a much smaller area planted to Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. And continuing around the slope are the vineyards of Verzy, largely east-facing now, and again spreading down in a fan from the village which lies on the edge of the mountaintop forest. Again Pinot Noir rules (about 80%), although this has been a more recent development than in Verzenay and Mailly, as the vineyards were largely planted with Chardonnay during the 18th century. Together all three villages, as you might expect from the proportions of the varieties planted, have strong reputations for their Pinot Noir.

Continue around the slopes of the mountain, passing one or two premier cru villages such as Trépail, and you soon arrive at the next trio of grands crus on the Montagne de Reims. Of these the most significant is perhaps Ambonnay, the second largest of all the grands crus with about 360 hectares, again mostly (about 85%) Pinot Noir. Contiguous with these are the vineyards of neighbouring Bouzy, only slightly smaller in terms of area than Ambonnay, with 90% Pinot Noir. In both case these two villages lie at the very foot of the slope, marking the boundary between the vineyards which sweep up the mountainside towards the tress, and the arable land which runs away from the mountain. Finally comes Louvois, essentially an extension of the Bouzy vineyards, the vine snaking down into the wooded valley where Louvois lies. There are only about 40 hectares here, and because of their aspect the wines are not as highly regarded as those of Bouzy and Ambonnay.

There are many houses with vineyards here, and many growers who stake their reputation on the wines of the Montagne de Reims. The region's worth lies in Pinot Noir, as you would imagine, each village contributing something unique, be it the rich aroma of a wine from Bouzy, the body of a Verzenay or the perfume of Mailly. The first of these has a particularly strong reputation as a blending wine for high quality rosé, perhaps reflected by the town's appellation for Bouzy Rouge, a little-known still red wine made from the Pinot Noir grown around the town. The box above indicates a list of the growers and houses best associated with Reims and its mountain, either through their location, or by virtue of ownership of vineyards. It is, however, a taster rather than an exhaustive list. I have also provided a list of the premiers crus that can be found here, which taken with my brief account of the grands crus above should make a good starting point for an exploration of the region.

• Part 6: Valleys and Slopes