South East Vineyards Association Trip

This week, please find a report by a fellow blogger who used a travel bursary with International Farmlink and Eurolink's assistance to find out more about the production of Champagne. The writer was a city worker until he decided to go into wine production. His blog can be found here.

SEVA Champagne Trip report (22nd - 26th of June 2011) 

I’m off to Champagne with the South East Vineyards Association (SEVA)! This is a good opportunity to learn a lot more about Champagne, meet lots of English industry people and have a break. It didn’t start too well with the coach turning up an hour late, but soon we were on our way through the Channel Tunnel on our way to the world’s most famous wine region, to which I had only been once before. 

Champagne Jacquinot - The first visit of the SEVA Champagne trip was to Jacquinot in Epernay. Jean-Manuel is well acquainted with the English wine industry. He first worked with Nyetimber a decade ago, and since then has moved away from that to be the Wineskills mentor for sparkling wine, via which he visits and speaks to lots of English wine makers. He’s a very charismatic bloke, and his wines were tasting very nicely today. I particularly liked his Harmony’96 and Symphonie’00 so I bought some.

What did I learn from the visit? Well the topic of riddling came up and Jean-Manuel made the point that to get a good clarity in the resulting wine he always leaves the riddling crate to sit for a week next to the gyropalate so the lees resettles before starting the riddling. When loading the crate into the gryopalate, extreme care is taken not to move the bottles suddenly.

This morning I visited the CIVC, the industry body which represents Champagne  growers and houses. They are a powerful body who effectively have the power of law in Champagne. The CIVC is funded by a tax on both growers and houses, to the total of about 20 million Euros a year. Amongst other things they legislate to determine production methods and protect the brand worldwide. It was the latter which left the biggest impression on me given the strangely heavy focus the topic received in the presentation I saw. “Champagne” is only for Champagne, right! 

I also learned some basic facts, such as the harvest yield is about 10-12 tonnes/hectare, and land costs about 1 million euros per hectare. I already knew that Great Britain is the biggest importer of Champagne, but not the scale of this “lead”. Annual Champagne exports (in order) are: GB (35 million), USA (17 million), Germany (13 million), Belgium (9 million), Japan (7 million) and so on. Apparently only half the 35 million is actually drunk in Great Britain, with the other half finding its way to be re-exported elsewhere.

Plumecoq Experimental Vineyard - The CIVC run an experimental vineyard called Plumecoq. We were taken round by one of their viticultural researchers, and were impressed at the range and depth of work being undertaken. Perhaps most obviously impressive was the “precision viticuture” which took the form of a small tracked vehicle with GPS, computer and optical sensors. These sensors monitor canopy density and colour, hence indicating vigour and nutrient levels. Plumecoq monitors all vines once a week and has a few years of data already.

It was interesting to hear comments made about vine density. Champagne planting can be around 10,000 vines per hectare, about 3 times a typical recent planting in England. But the researchers at Plumecoq have trialled many different vine spacings and reckon the 2 metre row width makes sense. Going from 1 metre to 2 metres (with associated increases in canopy height) showed only a 20% reduction of yield. I was interested, though, that they said they saw a slight increases acidity in the grapes. But when taking into account the extra labour and machine costs of the higher density spacing, the view shared was that wider spacing probably made sense (especially in an era in which Champagne grape acidities are creeping down for climatic reasons). 

Perhaps the other most notable point I heard was regarding botrytis, and the result that a grass cover-crop reduces the incidence of this fungal disease. I had previously heard the opposite that grass makes the atmosphere humid and hence encourages botrytis. However, the researcher said that empirically the a grass sward reduced incidence of botrytis, and gave 2 reasons: that grass dries out the ground in general, and that the competition with the vines triggers a vine response which makes them less susceptible to botrytis. The second reason in particular sounds curious to me, though others in the group thought it matched with other things they had heard. 

Lastly of interest was an observation that there is more chlorosis in the region than in most years, despite the dry weather. We were told that the conventional wisdom is that chlorosis comes when conditions are wet, which causes increased dissolved calcium (from the chalk-rich soil) to antagonistically effect the vines’ ability to uptake iron. However, the increased chlorosis this year might be caused either by the high yield last year (hence decreased reserves within the vine) or the fact that vines are drawing water from lower down in the ground, an area with a higher concentration of calcium. Interesting stuff.

More next week.

Travel bursaries are available to contribute to the cost of study trips to help your business. If you are interested, please contact the International Farmlink.