Time to Hoard the Bubbly?

By Bettina Gartner

These would be hard times for Voltaire and Churchill. Marilyn Monroe too. Champagne, the libation they all adored, is running short. The drink itself is as effervescently seductive as ever--322 million bottles were sold last year, thanks largely to the world's new rich. Russia imported 731,322 bottles in 2006--39% more than the year before. China's imports increased 50%. That demand has pushed Champagne, the beautifully austere part of northeastern France that produces this nectar, to the brink. "For 30 years the region of Champagne has always succeeded in coping with demand," Frederic Cumenal, president of the world's top brand, Moet & Chandon, said recently. "Today that's no longer the case. We will soon hit a wall."

What's legally defined as "champagne" in most of the world comes only from a specific 84,000-acre (34,000 hectares) region. An 80-year-old French law carefully maps where the grapes--pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay--can be grown. The Institut National de l'Origine et de la Qualite (INAO) determines exactly how much the winegrowers can produce--this year's harvest is expected to bring in 400 million bottles. With a steadily increasing demand, winemakers have asked French regulators to commit what would once have been considered heresy: to redefine or even expand the boundaries of Champagne. The beverage, after all, gets some of its character from its chalky terroir and rough climate. Yet the Syndicat General des Vignerons de la Champagne, the grape-growers union, argues that an expansion would simply be a return to Champagne's origins. When the region was first defined in 1927, it included 128,500 acres (52,000 hectares), but that area was shrunk after World War II.

Redefining the land won't give winemakers "any more oxygen right now," says Stephen Leroux, marketing director for Bollinger. To handle any potential shortfalls, the INAO is requiring that winegrowers set aside some of their yield when harvests are good. Ordinary champagne can be sold 15 months after harvest; vintage champagne, say, a Pol Roger Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill ($180 for the '96) must age at least three years, and a Bollinger Champagne Grande Annee ($110 for the '97) must age at least five years.

Some of the big champagne houses are looking a little farther north for their next harvest--across the English Channel. Climate change has raised the average temperature in Champagne during the growing season 2.2-oF (1.2-oC) over the past 50 years, altering the cool temperatures that give balance to the champagne produced there, says Gregory Jones, a climatologist at Southern Oregon University. "With such temperatures you could make a Burgundy or Bordeaux, rather than champagne," he says. Today southern England has roughly the same climate that Champagne did 25 years ago--and the same chalky soil in those famous white cliffs of Dover. French champagne houses are sniffing out land in England while it's still selling at a comparative discount to Champagne.

A few English winemakers aren't waiting for the French to pop their corks. Chapel Down, Nyetimber and RidgeView wineries are already making sparkling wines that rival champagne in quality and price. But what to call the stuff? Ridgeview founder Michael Roberts has dubbed his bubbly Merret, after Christopher Merret, an English doctor who, he says, described how to make fizzy wine decades before the French monk Dom Perignon did. Expect an argument from the French.