Beyond Bubbly: A Wine Industry Grows in Champagne

(Time) - The centuries-old, staunchly conservative wine making region of Champagne has long been dominated by a handful of historic, heavily-financed Champagne houses, whose legendary brands like Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot and Krug are fêted the world over. They buy up millions of bottles worth of grapes from across the region (from the 15,000 or so growers who actually own 90% of vineyard land), blending them annually to fit their house styles. But today, a new wave of Champagne growers is shaking up the old order by making their own wines, and in so doing, may indelibly broaden the definition of bubbly.

“After having been asleep for 30 years, Champagne is now very awake,” says Pierre Bérot, director of Caves Taillevent, the prestigious Paris wine merchants with branches in Japan and Lebanon. A keen nose for viticultural revolutions, Bérot observed the rise of independent winemakers in Languedoc in the 1990s, and the Loire in the 2000s. “Now Champagne has become the most dynamic winemaking region in France,” he says. Bérot traces the current fomenting in the region to a grower named Anselme Selosse, who brought Burgundian vinification techniques and terroir philosophy to Champagne in the 1980s. Grower-producer Cédric Bouchard agrees. With Selosse’s subsequent ascent to fame, “this idea began spreading among growers,” he says, “that we could manage alone, without the big houses–that we too could make our own cuvées."