Article: The era of grower Champagnes is over

Interesting take on the future of Champagne:

Jacquesson’s Jean-HervĂ© Chiquet argues that in the grower world there is a ‘super top ten’, and beyond that just a few dozen who are successful. “I will be generous and say there are 150 great growers, but there are more than 4,000 making wine the way the laboratory tells them to make it, and the quality is very low,” he suggests. “But Champagne is the fastest moving wine region in France. Things are changing now, and you have to adapt.”

This makes sense to me. What’s happening now seems like a market correction; the market for grower’s Champagne was never huge to begin with, so we’re seeing a few folks who decided to jump on the bandwagon and never really make headway return to selling their grapes to large houses. There will be buyers for the top growers - Ulysse Collin, Egly-Ouriet, Selosse, etc - but the ones who try to go their own way with a lack of marketing and distribution may find themselves left out.

IMO, Champagne sales are down because Champagne is expensive. There is no cheap Champagne. With the lack of restaurants and the lack of anything to celebrate, luxury wine - and you could basically categorize all Champagne as luxury wine - is falling by the wayside, aside from the true “top” producers. Champagne is strange in that it is a luxury product desired by people who otherwise don’t know a whole lot about wine itself and thus brand recognition is incredibly important. It is no surprise that grower’s Champagne is not receiving the reception it deserves in the market as a whole, because the average consumer will probably spend their money on Dom Perignon, not Vilmart.

Light on details. I’m not sure Champagne is suffering that much more than most winemakers.

Sean, your analysis is very astute.

Thoughtful post Sean, and an interesting article as well.

I drink more grower champagne than I drink any other section of the wine market, and am doing my best to support at least 10-15 producers. I might be a noticeable bump in sales at Lassaigne, Bereche, Lallement, and Doyard among others.

While everything in the article may hold true, it doesn’t seem to be much different than what I see in the Willamette Valley. Marginal climates where lower yields preclude cheap “value wines”, unless the process is solely efficiency based (or a yard sale as a producer gets desperate) always have a hierarchy among producers. Seeing the challenges that grower/producers face with competition in the Willamette Valley moving from 250 to 900 over a relatively short span of time, I can only imagine how hard it must be for a grower in Champagne to get established with most of 4000 grower producers popping up in the last 20-25 years.

I have my doubts at the benefits of a “cheap” Champagne as gateway. Everyone has heard of Champagne already, so an AtoZ type of wine has little benefit in turning people on to Champagne. I feel it would actually detract from the value grower Champagne really represents at the moment. For my palate, Great grower Champagnes is only exceeded in value by German white wines. But as much as I love Riesling, I drink considerably more Champagne.
Grower pricing has been moving up, whether due to importer or grower price increases I have no idea, and the number of bottles that sell at $40-$50 is definitely higher than the number at +$65, so whether the increases of past few years are a good idea, is perhaps something that growers should look at. That said, in a luxury region, pricing really good wines at lower prices has plenty of problems with the model as well.

I know that I will do my best to continue supporting grower producers in Champagne, and wish them success. The wines, for me, are far better than the comparable tier of wines from the big houses.

Interesting topic. In all markets there is a natural coalescence around the creme-de-la-creme. And it does seem to me that the culty producers–Selosse, Prevost, C. Bouchard etc–are getting harder and harder to find. But I do suspect it’s very tough for the smaller, barely known producers to survive. Prices are steep, land is expensive, and it’s not like Burgundy where you can gain instant credibility from holdings in prime GCs or 1ers. It doesn’t resonate in the same way if you have grapes in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ or whatever. Perhaps there will be some consolidation?

My guess is that the guys who have good vineyards, farm well and make quality wines will succeed more often that the growers who have mediocre holdings, overcrop, and are not very good winemakers. Just like in other wine regions.

At least is not true that there is no cheap Champagne (in Europe).
I can buy Champagne in Germany from 12.99 € upwards a bottle.
I don’t say it’s great but 4 out of 5 are drinkable with pleasure, and if you pay around 20 to 25+ € you sometimes may find a really good sparkler worth 90 points or above 
 now or then 
 and for up to 40 you have a fine selection at hand here 

The good grower’s sparklers in Germany are usually more than 20+ (and only rarely better).

No doubt - but as the article said, Champagne is exporting more product than ever.

No shock that we are completely aligned. I prefer grower Champagne to pretty much everything else. A few of the “growers” (e.g. MoussĂ©) even buy some grapes for their calling card NV. I don’t mind that if they work with farmers who share similar principles. Drinking through a number of grower Champagnes during this quarantine has only further cemented our focus at Schloss Bueker. With the exception of Krug, Laura and I both prefer grower wines. We even have a quasi-replacement for the Krug MV.

Overall, give me a bottle of Pierre Peters, Bereche, Vilmart, Chartogne-Taillet, Eric Rodez or Cedric Bouchard (to name just a few) any day over a big house wine, including Dom, Cristal, etc


I do worry about a producer such as Chartogne-Taillet with all the single parcel wines. I buy them, as do others here on Berserkers, but without restaurants, will those fall by the wayside, or will they drag down the grower.

I’m a little skeptical of the argument here. Taken very literally, it may be true, but the “growers” that are going to go under are not the producers that most people reading the article will be thinking of when they hear the phrase “grower Champagne”.

Strictly speaking, there have been grower-bottlers in Champagne for a very long time, and their numbers really multiplied in the 1930s when wine prices fell and the only way for owner to eek out a living on their very small holdings (average was around 2ha back then) was to bottle and market the product themselves, selling grapes having become insufficiently remunerative. There are many “growers” today whom we have never heard of, and who produce their wines, as HervĂ© Chiquet says in the article, according to the oenologist’s textbook: much of their production is sold to the domestic French market, either at the cellar door or in the supermarkets. The wines are often, frankly, not great (though if you are price conscious and simply looking for “bubbles” they may sometimes suffice I guess); and indeed it remains the case that the very worst wines in Champagne are produced by growers in this sense, rather than either Grandes Marques or cooperatives.

But when we talk about “grower Champagne”, we are in reality mostly talking about the sort of artisanal revolution in viticulture and winemaking that began in the 1970s with Selosse and which today has really coalesced into what can be called a movement. For the reasons given above, talking of a “grower revolution” is not necessarily the best way to describe this movement, even though its agents are indeed for the most part growers (and even though I have used the term in print myself).

The reality is that Tyson is probably correct if he is saying that there will be fewer poor to mediocre RMs (and RCs, too) that no one participating in this forum has ever heard of. And this is a trend that has been evident for over a decade. But I am very doubtful that any growers with even a modicum of a reputation for quality are about to go out of business.

Agree with William Kelley’s thoughts, that the term “Grower Champagne” could have different meanings in different markets. A native Frenchman may have concerns about domestic and export markets, but non-natives do not.

If any producer doesn’t focus on the quality of the product, both domestic and export markets will become challenging. And good riddance.

Right, and the content of the article is hard to argue with: I interpret all the people Tyson interviews to be saying that poor and mediocre growers dependent on the French market are a declining breed, whereas the best growers will continue to thrive. It’s just the headline that’s liable to be misconstrued. A better title would have been “Some Champagne producers you have never heard of are going to disappear, continuing a long-term trend”.

Perhaps - however the few French/German retailers that I buy from that sell Chartogne seem to get tiny allocations of some of the single vineyards and the wines seem to regularly sell out very quickly. This leads me to believe that the demand is rather healthy on the retail side.

I am sure it is. The question is what % of the wines were sold on premise. I bet it was 60-70%, at least in the US.

My universe revolves mostly around Champagne now. It’s more than 1/2 my wine budget now, and of a few people I run with, most notably my wife’s business partner, the same is true for his spending I would assert, too. Then there are folks in this thread, notably David, who I agree with in his comments. Of my entire Champagne inventory, which is growing quarter over quarter, I own just Cristal as my big house name. Everything else is grower. I love the high-touch, the farming commitment to get away from the chemical BS and the personal touch I felt when I visited many of these people in 2018. They treated me like someone that mattered, they took time with me, and none of them prior to my visit had ever met me. That told me something, cementing for me the passion and heart that these growers invest into their craft.

I can’t drink enough grower Champagne these days, and I love sharing it with others to bring more people into the circle. If you need evidence, look at my top wines for 2020 below–only one is not Gower Champagne.

I may be just one dude, one voice, and not a big fish in the pond of spenders but I will continue to make every effort I care to support the grower community. 100%.

I don’t disagree with Tyson’s article, but I think some of the comments in it are exaggerated a bit. Consolidation could and would certainly be a good thing for Champagne. In a free market economy and crowded market, if you don’t make a quality product, you eventually go out of business or you change your business model. The producers whose labels/brands are going to disappear from the market are producers 99.999% of the world has never heard of - and for good reason, the end produt is not good.

Most grower Champagne is not very good and most of it does not leave the Champagne ‘area’ let alone France. High quality producers of all sizes are going to continue to do well. Champagne is certainly going through some challenging times and who knows what is going to be declared as the yield for the 2020 harvest. This is likely to lead to some consolidation or ‘closure’ of some grower producers based on economic conditions and overall desire to be in the Champagne production and/or farming business. If you can make a better living selling your grapes or leasing your land rather than making Champagne and you don’t have the passion to want to make Champagne or be a farmer then there is nothing wrong with selling your grapes or leasing your land. A lot of growers are proud to sell their grapes to Krug, Clicquot, Bollinger, etc
 A lot of folks are also happy to lease their land to a quality negociant and let them manage the vineyards and handle all the work. Nothing wrong with that. In many cases, the end product is better than what the grower/land owner could have made.

It is a sad fact, but most folks who own land in Champagne just want an abundant yield and they want it harvested as soon as possible so that they can get the maximum amount of money as quickly as they can. People talk a lot about the big houses or large volume producers and how they don’t care about their vines and just want to pump out bottle after bottle without regard to anything. For the most part, that is absolutely not true anymore. The ‘grower movement’ of the 90s and early 00s really made the larger producers re-evaluate things. Most of the top houses have completely revamped their approach to farming and with their stature and voice are now helping to lead the region’s movement towards more sustainable viticulture. The problem is that most growers still don’t care. Yes, the large houses are paying more for top quality grapes, organic grapes, naturally farmed grapes, etc
 and some have actually started turning down grapes, but there always seems to be someone around to buy the grapes and this is what has prevented Champagne from really making a change.

There are still new growers popping up and there always will be. Hard work and quality will survive. A number of classical growers have become negociants for various reasons. Sometimes it is to allow the company to survive generation after generation, sometimes it is to grow and thrive as a business, and sometimes it is both. I would much rather have a quality producer like Bereche buy in quality grapes and/or manage someone’s land than have someone make bad Champagne from the land or have Bereche face financial difficulties or be unable to invest to improve quality. Also, remember that a lot of growers who make their own wine also sell grapes and/or juice to the negociants. They need that balance to get through the more difficult times and keep quality at the level they aim for. In the end, the larger and smaller producers both need each other and each helps to push the other to achieve better things.

No shock at all. I still really enjoy vintage wines from the bigger houses, and have a high regard for Bollinger, Gosset, Pol Roger, etc. in general. But generally just find the small producer wines more intriguing, and, as noted, much better at the basic NV level.

I generally don’t sweat smaller producers buying grapes. They have time(and often passion), so they can have a connection to purchased fruit that is meaningful far beyond the dollar signs. Both Walter Scott and Goodfellow purchase 100% of our fruit, but we also have close relationships with our growers and put a huge priority on the site, and on ensuring the success of the growers we work with.

And just a thought from my own experience regarding the more elite small parcel wines. For Goodfellow, the Heritage and Block bottlings are a lifeline to our continued viability under the current conditions. While my winery was roughly 50% restaurant prior to Covid, a wine sold to a restaurant would see the typical restaurant mark up. So it was often our Willamette Valley or possibly a single vineyard bottle on the list. But as people reach out to us at the winery, they are able to drink the Block bottlings for the same price as the WV in a restaurant and the Heritage for the same cost as a vineyard designate. And that’s generally what people are focused on(or they are like Sean Smith and Brian Stotter and buy both top tier and cellar defenders from us).

I am hopeful that Charton-Taillet is seeing the same situation occurring.

Agree, with COVID, the demand for luxury items (champagne falls in that category) has dropped precipitously. That being said, there is plenty of champagne at reasonable prices that I’m not sure I agree that it is really a luxury item. Just has that perception. I drink a lot of champagne and keep plenty on hand so not a luxury to me at all.

If it’s perceived as a luxury item, then it will be treated as a luxury item.