by Richard Harvey
The Champagne town of Épernay just reeks of money (not an exclusively French fragrance), with seemingly endless palatial buildings lining the Avenue de Champagne. Up front ; fabulously decorated and opulent reception rooms- very haute couture. In some cases (Moet et Chandon) Versailles-style gardens top off the outside opulence. But in most cases, there hides behind some of the facades winery facilities capable of handling millions of litres of juice that might be destined to fill sporting cups or as a shower for champion Formula One drivers. There are frequently “camions-citernes” (tanker trucks) posed like a supermodel in front of some of these elegant facades. Not when the millionaires are expected, I suppose.
But holy shit- these buildings project the unfortunately near-universal image of Champagne as exclusive, luxurious and expensive (as it frequently is). Massive iron gates to these palaces of grape juice are often closed, and one gets the feeling that a gold-trimmed invitation (or a titanium credit card) would be necessary for entry. Or at least some bonafide Gucci…
I’m really happy that we work with real Champagne vignerons like Jérôme Dehours. I arrived on a tough day for him. He was missing 7 of his 10 employees that day. One who had chopped off the tip of her finger while pruning vines, another whose wife was in labour, yet another was at Emergency for stomach pain, again another was embroiled in a dust up with his ex-wife, ex-girlfriend and some gendarmes.
I gave Jérôme my sympathy and he replied with a very meaningful Gallic shrug. He kept cracking jokes and smiling, he bought me an effing great lunch at a tiny restaurant nearby that you and I would have probably cruised past, and just rolled up his sleeves and got back to work in the cold, wet vineyards as we said goodbye.
Before lunch however, we hopped into his 4x4 to tour the surrounding vineyards. The cold wind was biting and a few drops of rain were falling as we looked at his Maisoncelles parcel and he assured me that this site was always windy year round. I’d rather have been there on a hot summer day.
As we trudged around, he showed me the nuances of pruning “Vallée de la Marne”- style and Guyot simple. His well reasoned approach to organics is (as in many vineyard areas) easily contrasted with his neighbours chemically-blasted, lunar plots. He has even stopped the traditional burning of the pruning canes and just wood-chips them into bits that will be worked back into his soils.
There is such a variety of elevation, slope and aspect in and around the hamlet of Cerseuil (where Dehours is), with the Marne river running mainly east-west, intersecting with the small creek of Le Flagot running south-north. The weather sort of spoiled the view as it was quite misty but it did spare us the full glory of the 25m high statue of Pope Urbain II in Châtillon-sur-Marne across the river
The obsession with Pinot Meunier of course comes from a natural and historic base, with the cooler soils of the Marne Valley delaying bud-break on the already prone to late budding Pinot Meunier, helping avoid the ever more frequent late frosts. Buds are pushing through, but the next 4 or 5 days will slow them down (hopefully not “burn” them with frost!). Jah needs to cut these people some slack! Jérôme lost 60% of the 2021 harvest, and yet he left our allocation for this year mostly intact.
He’s also going to replace one of the traditionally-sized 4000kg Coquart vertical presses with a scaled-down one. These are larger versions of the wooden “basket presses” that are to be found in the basements of myriad Calgarians of Italian heritage.
Small harvests and small parcels just cannot fill the bigger presses. And he’s quite adamant about retaining his classic vertical presses when many have changed to flashy pneumatic presses.
After our vineyard visit, my Blunnies are heavy with mud, so I knew that my chances for an invite to a dance party at any of the palaces on the Avenue de Champagne that night were now even more slim, but I could not seem to locate any fucks to give. All the same, I would have liked to been able to paraphrase Orson Welles when he was shilling Paul Masson “Champagne” back in the 1970’s:
“Every night at Champagne Bling-Bling, there’s a Wine Tasting Party!!”
