Classification of Champagne Vineyards - Origins

Origins

See also: History of Champagne#From the late 19th century to modern day

Prior to the development of the Échelle des Crus systems, the Champagne industry functioned on a business dynamic that heavily favored the Champagne houses over the vine growers. Since making sparkling wine is a costly and time consuming endeavor, most vine growers did not have the means or finances to produce Champagne themselves. So instead they would sell their grapes to the Champagne houses who would produce the wines. In a means to generate greater profit, some Champagne houses would look outside the Champagne region for grapes. The development of the French national railroad system in the mid 19th century opened up easy access to cheaper grapes from the Loire Valley and the Languedoc. The Champenois vine growers were incensed at these practices, believing that using "foreign" grapes to make sparkling was not producing true Champagne. They petitioned the government for assistance and a law was based requiring that at least 51% of the grapes used to make Champagne needed to come from the Champagne region itself.

With vineyard owners vastly outnumbering the producers, the Champagne houses used this dynamic of excess supply vs limited demand to their advantage. They hired agents, known as commissionaires, to negotiate prices with vine growers. These commissionaires were paid according to how low a price they could negotiate and many employed unsavory tactics to achieve their means-including violence and intimidation. Some commissionaires openly sought bribes from vine growers, often in the form of extra grapes which they would sell themselves for extra profit. The prices they were able to negotiate barely covered the cost of farming and harvesting which left many Champenois vine growers in poverty. With the constant threat of Champagne houses ignoring the law and using more "foreign" grapes, tensions were already high between vine growers and Champagne houses when the late 19th century and early 20th century brought with it the devastation of the phylloxera epidemic and a string of poor weather and poor vintages. The tensions culminated in the Champagne riots of 1910 and 1911. To avoid the type of situation which lead to the riots, producers and growers of the Champagne region formed an agreement that developed the Échelle des Crus system where prices would be set by a joint committee of producers and growers, fairly applied and based on the presumed quality of a village's vineyards. In recent times there has been discussion of modifying the classification and going to a "Burgundy-like" system whereby vineyards, rather than villages, would be the basis of ratings. Critics charge that a system based on rating an entire village ignores terroir differences within the large area of a village.