PROFESSIONAL CHAMPAGNE ORGANISATIONS

From the Sun King to the King of Wines
The name of "Champagne" owes little to chance!

     Champagne and its heavy bottles with their distinguished labels and corks wrapped in wire did not appear overnight. Smartly dressed and topped with pewter they can be found in the most luxurious window displays lined up like soldiers on parade, at the ready with a pop, or a muted detonation for those who prefer it, to mark the opening of a celebration, and to put everyone in that champagne frame of mind. Most people have some idea of the complex procedures involved in the making of champagne, but its history, and the legal wrangles and disputes that are also part of champagne's past are less well known.

Champagne did not become the most prized of drinks, and a symbol of love, luxury, and success without a series of lengthy disputes. It was ultimately these very disputes that enabled champagne to gain its identity and legal status. The red or pale wine (vin gris) of Hautvillers, Aÿ and Avenay favored in turn by Léon X, Charles-Quint, François I, Henry VIII and Henri IV amongst others, and which by the end of the seventeenth century had become a lightly sparkling white wine, did not reach its position of supremacy as a symbol of wealth and good fortune purely on the basis of its gustatory qualities, as unusual and delightful as they may be.      The favorite wine of the Sun King's court is now drunk at family celebrations, and at social, commercial and sporting events all over the world. This state of affairs did not occur by chance! Champagne is not just a pleasure shared, it is also an adventure.

This is almost certainly truer for those who make it (or one might say for those who are in its service) than for those who content themselves with drinking it: for it is to them and to their forefathers that the adventure of champagne belongs. It is a tale worth the telling.

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I - THE PIONEERS: The Benedictine Monks and the First Names in Champagne

The New Economy      The industrial age and free trade arrived in France at the end of the eighteenth century. The far-reaching Chapelier Law of 1791 swept away the professional guilds and corporations that had existed since the Middle Ages, and with them their over-complicated rules and regulations. The French Revolution swiftly created the unfettered economic environment that businesses and merchants had been dreaming of for over a hundred years.       To prevent the past from reshaping itself "coalitions" of both workers and employers were forbidden; any violation of this law was punished as a criminal offense. The new free market economy removed all restrictions and left capitalism to its own devices. This laissez-faire approach was not without its dangers, the most serious of these being the exploitation of the weak by the strong: two hundred years of social unrest were in the making.       The sudden disappearance of any regulation of standards that had been part of the Ancien Régime created another danger: that the fevered manufacturing and quests for further sales, without basic controls, would lead to a drop in quality. The old system not only protected trades, and those who practiced them, but also how products were made and sold, and often in the most extraordinary detail. The rules embodied a strict code of trade for both artisans and merchants, the respect of which guaranteed what was rather aptly known as the “honesty” of the goods. Indeed the word suggests a direct link not only between objects produced and a certain professional pride but also with a profession that observed a strict code of conduct. Contents

Champagne or Sparkling Wine?

     The price of removing all the rules with a single stroke of the pen, with no other precaution than a simple fine for mistakes in the nature or quantity of merchandise, was a risk that quality would deteriorate. Whilst such a price may not measurable, its impact can be dramatic.

     The objects treasured by the nobility of the past, which are now on display in museums, are clearly of far greater value than those possessed by the middle classes that followed them; and in today's mass markets the products are of an even lower standard. A free market may well offer the prospect of prosperity for all, but it brings with it a downside: the insidious poverty of product standardization. How could the "Wine of Kings" possibly have survived the collapse of the monarchy in France and the end of aristocratic society?

     It will come as no surprise that the bourgeoisie, in their efforts to imitate nobility, and appreciative of the good life, were keen to preserve this marvel of the wine maker's art. But would they be able to do this without adulteration? Would they manage to preserve the complex procedures involved in its production, its quality and its fragile flavor? Champagne or sparkling wine? The distinction did not yet exist at the dawn of the nineteenth century, but the question must be asked: its answer was to affect the history of wine-makng for more than a century ...

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The Wine of the Cloisters

     The production of champagne involves the miracle of secondary fermentation, and has a reputation for being difficult and requiring a great deal of technical knowledge. Champagne was born at the end of the seventeenth century in slightly mysterious circumstances in the depths of the cellars of a Benedictine abbey in the Valley of the Marne. Monasteries were of course places of prayer, but they were also centers of learning, and of wealth.

The Miracle of Saint-Remi

     Contrary to popular belief life behind the thick walls of the abbey did not exist on the edge of society, but rather at its center. Those who entered, far from being excluded from the world, were very much in touch. The idea of a pious prison is retrospective and mistakenly harsh. Monasteries were designed to retain light in a world made gloomy by misfortune and misery.

     The monks charged with the running of these communities could be involved with cutting edge research, but live within a society ordered by piety and ruled over by a patriarchal power, a society still rustic, and already mercantile.

     The ingenious monk or monks to whom the credit for the first champagne production is traditionally given knew exactly how to handle the unpredictable grapes that grow on the slopes of Épernay and Rheims in northern France. The autumn weather is very variable in the Champagne region, and the grapes were harvested just as they began to mature, preferably in the cool of the morning. The resulting wines were light and, by some kind of divine intervention, slightly sparkling. It was as if the wine had retained some of the greenness and freshness of the grape juice and was continuing with the alchemy of the maturing process in the bottle.

     This natural fizziness, whilst unusual, did occur in several other regions of France, but the inhabitants of Champagne must have been particularly taken with it. The extremely skillful wine-makers of the monastic communities, where both pleasure and wine had a well-defined place, managed to tame this wonder of nature and succeeded, before others it would seem, in creating a bottle of lightly foaming wine; and this was the birth of champagne.

Benedictine Monk

The names of first Dom Pierre Pérignon and then Frère Jean Oudart have been recorded by history: these Benedictine monks were probably not alone, and the credit should quite possibly be shared amongst others, but very little information about their lives and their art penetrated the thick walls of the monastery's cellars. The contemplative wine-making monks were no doubt as attached to their ideas as they were appreciative of fine wine, and one can imagine them taking the best part of their accumulated knowledge with them to the grave.          Their burial by their brothers - by the rules of the monastery- would certainly have been a very quiet occasion, and a particularly sad one on account of such a loss; although the severity of the mourning may have been somewhat relieved by the cellar's reserve...          Our knowledge of this golden monastic period is very limited. We know that the famous secret consisted partly of extremely skilful blending of wines that could vary if the vines were only a stone's throw apart and partly of endless complicated rotations and manipulations of the wine after it had been bottled.

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The King's Delight

     Luckily others who were less discreet than the monks in proclaiming their pleasure came to know the wine with the golden bubbles, and champagne received the sanction of the royal table. Since approval by the king effectively meant approval by everyone this lofty honor was of enormous value. The commercial success sought by the Benedictines was achieved, and whatever was going to happen next one thing was for sure: champagne would not be forgotten.

      With the passing on of the holy winemakers (Dom Pérignon, as reserved as ever, was to hang up his apron for the last time in the same year that the Sun-King was to see his last sunset) new figures established themselves at Rheims during the Regency. Some of them were from the region: Nicolas Ruinart, Jacques Fourneaux, Claude Moët and Memmie Jacquesson for example. Others came from the banks of the Rhine, such as Florens-Louis Heidsieck, or from Switzerland or Belgium, such as Henri-Marc de Venoge and Théodore Van der Vecken.

     They were to be joined by others later: Henri-Guillaume Piper, Christian Walbaum, Charles-Henri Heidsieck, Peter-Arnold de Mumm, Josef Jacob Placide Bollinger, William Deutz, Pierre-Joseph Herbert Geldermann, Johan-Josef Krug and Charles Koch... They had money and the will to succeed, and some knowledge of the art of wine-making. They came “to make the wine of champagne” but they did not have much experience in the vineyard, or if they did only incidentally.

     Government officials would much later refer to them as “handling-merchants” (négociants-manipulants), a perfectly accurate if not very kind description of the process of producing and selling the sacred bottles. We do not know quite how the secrets of the monks were discovered, or how these merchants managed to produce the same elusive pale golden sparkling wines from the delicate and unpredictable grapes of the Champagne region.

     However, despite breakages running at between thirty and fifty percent, they managed to seal the wine in bottles and to sell it both in and outside of France. This gives some indication of the immense prices that were paid for exceptional wines, and of the extent of the early merchant's efforts in establishing champagne's notoriety.

      Nonetheless, the commerce of champagne remained insignificant compared to the wool trade, which remained the basis of the Champagne region's economy. On the eve of the French Revolution scarcely three hundred thousand bottles were being produced, and would often explode if you so much as winked at them!

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A Magical Potion

      The troubles and terrors of the Revolution wiped out this trade but, in a paradox that can only be explained by the resourcefulness of the merchants, were ultimately of great service to the fortunes of the noble and capricious wine of the Ancien Régime. By the grace of God champagne escaped the Terror, and even entered the history books.

     Champagne became famous as, one by one, it joyfully turned the aristocratic heads of Europe - some of whom would fall to the guillotine, some of whom would burn in the nightmare that was to follow, and some of whom would nostalgically and cautiously attempt to rebuild history.

     The light winged bubbles had an ethereal quality, and champagne came to be regarded as a magical potion. The ruling middle classes prospered under the Monarchie de Juillet (1830-1848) and the Second Empire (1852-1870) and were keen to take their turn, and as often as possible, at drinking the famous wine.

     The violence of the recent events of the revolution that surrounded the middle class’s sudden emergence onto the pages of history spurred on their desire to celebrate, and this desire colored their view of everything. The unconcerned attitude of Louis XV, the humor of Voltaire, the gaiety of Mozart, the bravery of Napoleon, the finesse of Talleyrand, all were famous drinkers of champagne, and all must surely owe something to its magical properties! There was no doubt that the middle classes would be popping champagne corks.

      One has to admire in passing the great commercial skill of the founders of the champagne houses in making their wine known during these extraordinarily troubled times to the main players, crowned or otherwise, and in managing to make them serve as the glorious ambassadors of the golden wine of Champagne! The New Order's love of luxury may have been slightly less sumptuous than its predecessors, but it was certainly more solvent and, above all, more widespread - extending well beyond France's borders.

     The figures are there to prove it: in 1845 more than six and a half million bottles left Champagne, of which two thirds, or more than four million, were for export. A powerful modern industry was born in order to satisfy this huge and festive market. And this was just the beginning! This future giant was the result of the courage and hard work of the wine producers and champagne houses, and would pave the way to prosperity for the region.

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II – The Champagne Houses - Engines of Regional Prosperity

Masters of Commerce and Wine-making Technique

     However the pitfalls of standardization and imitations were awaiting champagne and its extraordinary commercial success. In his famous dictionary, which was begun in 1859 and did not appear until 1873, Littré defined Champagne (with a capital C) as a "Province of France that produces a famous sparkling white wine". He then defined champagne (with a small c) as "the wine of Champagne" and specifies that: "champagne is a factitious wine that is made primarily with the wine of Champagne, being most suitable to be worked in this fashion (on account of its lightness), but which has been imitated in Burgundy and elsewhere".

     From the pen of a man who was certainly more interested in etymological precision than the pleasures of the table, the word "factitious" implies "produced by art" rather than "artificial". The encyclopedist of the language of the nineteenth century has summarized everything in very few words. Champagne has a more elaborate production process than any other wine.

     The bouquet of different vintages and consistency of flavor of each brand involves blending processes; the sparkling effect is achieved by the addition of a small quantity of liqueur and then a fermentation in the bottle; and the wine's perfect clarity is obtained through a serious of delicate manipulations of the bottles.

      All of these operations were perfected through a process of trial and error by a breed of champagne producers - long extinct -who understood nature and who, whilst intending to curb and to harness its wildness, always acted with respect and humility.

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“Champagne”: wine or wine-making technique?

     The inevitable question arose: why not apply this unique technique developed on the banks of the Marne, which Pasteur's theories were about to explain, to wines other than those of Champagne? France was, after all, short of neither vineyards nor entrepreneurs.

     The Positivism that was all the rage celebrated the radiant marriage of Commerce and Science, a marriage to which Tradition was not invited, and whose absence marked the noisy celebrations with a certain irreparable dullness.

     The small c that Littré gave Champagne was a grammatical precision: no longer a proper noun Champagne had now also become a common noun. It was a sign: that which is known to all tends to become the property of all. The learned etymologist was quite correct in saying that the wine took its name from the region of its birth, but only after having defined the region itself as one without a previous history of wine production.

     In positivist France the commercial fortunes of champagne had reversed the situation: when it was unknown the wine took its name from its home region, but once famous it was champagne that gave its identity to the place of its birth. In short, the glory of champagne the wine eclipsed a thousand years of the history of Champagne the region. Littré was ambiguous on the issue of the grapes that link the wine to its region. “The wine of the Champagne region”, he wrote, “was more suitable on account of its lightness” to become champagne, which is an acknowledgement of its Champagne roots.

     But the erudite positivist cuts these roots, so to speak, by placing them between two serious brackets: “Champagne”, he says, “is made primarily with the wine of Champagne”, and continues, “it has been imitated in Burgundy and elsewhere”.

      This repeated past tense is significant. We are to understand that champagne is a technique that originated in Champagne. The author of the “Dictionary of the French Language” was not versed in the science of Law but he offers us the legal precedent that had been set by the ruling majority, and which would be in the minds of judges when they came to make a decision in a dispute.

      One has to face the facts: in the middle of the nineteenth century, at the moment when hostilities opened in the complex battle of corks Champagne's case got off to a bad start. Dom Pérignon, Frère Oudart and their companions would have been turning in their graves: Champagne as a wine was being consigned to history; as commerce and science were in the process of reducing it to a mere wine-making technique.

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The Champagne Houses’ Battle against the Wine Merchants

The trap had been set, and it was as hard to outsmart as it was tempting. The competition between the “champagnized” wines of Burgundy or Touraine obviously threatened Champagne's economy, but the competitive market was not without compensation for the merchants, or at least for some of them.      The advancing prosperity attracted newcomers who put their own interests before those of Champagne. Two camps formed: one consisting of the Houses that had originated in Champagne, who did not separate their own prosperity from that of the region, and another of the merchants dealing in the new wines who saw an opportunity to make money and had yet to develop any particular regional loyalty.       On one side the heads of the Houses, often from the Rhineland, had become vineyard owners, and thus were very much involved in the growing of grapes and the production of wine.

     On the other side, unlike the Champagne Houses, who literally had roots deep in the soil of Champagne, were the wine merchants, who were essentially tradesmen, and whilst they were sometimes wine producers they were not grape growers. They had an understanding of the soil, but they were not farmers, and so could be tempted to bring in other grapes, for champagne treatment, from the South of France for example, which were cheap and had an excellent yield.

     These new arrivals were drawn in considerable numbers by the commercial possibilities that presented themselves, and aspired more to financial success than to putting down regional roots. Looking to make their fortunes they were split between the value of a regional monopoly, which would guarantee a reasonably safe level of prosperity, and a competitive national market that promised to expand throughout France and beyond.

      These opposing market forces made the situation difficult, if not impossible, for those trying to plot a course within an economy that had become unstable. The newly arrived wine merchants found themselves in the midst of contradictions and quarrels and having to weigh up numerous complex advantages and disadvantages. Freedom in commerce can, like all freedom, be somewhat disconcerting.

      This struggle without rules became increasingly complicated. It placed the wine merchants that were not historically attached to Champagne through ancestry or a vineyard in an ironic position: they risked getting lost on this extraordinary treasure island that had been offered to them by the Benedictine monks, the King and the Revolutionaries.

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Cruel Freedom

This was not all. Economic freedom is not only disconcerting, but also cruel. Rich merchants and poor grape growers lived side by side, on the same land and in the same villages. All played a role in the wine's destiny, but the labors of those working on the windy slopes of the vineyards did not protect them from the ups and downs of the harvests. Poverty became a major issue, regardless of whether the harvests were plentiful or scarce.

The words viticulteur (grape grower) and viniculteur (wine producer) are the same except for one letter, but in the Champagne of the Monarchie de Juillet (1830-1848) this was the only indication of the enormous gulf that existed between the two activities. An increasing gap between the rich and the poor and the incomprehension that inevitably follows are the ingredients for what we today refer to as class division. This may be able to exist in a closed and ordered society, but in a society in which the way that freedom is perceived is changing (as in today's society that has become lax through over familiarity and distortion of freedom) such division can become a slow fuse for violence. By separating groups within the same community, and causing men to turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to inequality, this unhealthy situation gradually erodes a society's values. As ill feelings are suppressed and unrest develops a dangerous and unpredictable threat to the very structure of society is created. There is little doubt that the Champagne of 1830 was still very much attached to the values of the Ancien Régime, and in the small world of the grape markets the brutal logic of unbridled liberalism caused turmoil amongst the grape growers on one hand and the merchants on the other, enabling the ruthless snapping up of small fish by larger ones. As for the precious grapes it was now some time since the days when they were perceived as a fragile gift of God entrusted by the lay brothers to the head monk, they were now no longer even considered a noble and aristocratic fruit to be respectfully offered by the grape growers to the merchants. They became the stakes in an unequal battle in which the weak struggled to survive and the strong increased their wealth. The ruthless logic of the market threatened to sever the lifeline of Champagne society. The harmony that had existed whilst the Champagne Houses established themselves was in mortal danger. It was now perfectly imaginable that the day would come when hordes of angry grape growers armed with stakes would attack the merchant's houses, or tip cart loads of grapes over the steps of the Sous-Préfecture, grapes that no longer had a price...but let's not jump ahead!

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III – The Early Unionization of the Champagne Houses

"Make your Fortunes!"

Guizot was very much the political anchor for the "King of the Barricades” (Louis-Philippe) who was swept to power in the Revolution of 1830 only to be swept away again by the backlash in 1848. To break with the captivating but dangerous game of democratic power in which the Revolution was engulfed, and on which the Restoration had just foundered, he famously exhorted the peasant classes to “make your fortunes!” He could scarcely have made himself clearer. For vine growing areas Louis-Philippe’s perhaps overly cerebral minister gave official weight to the call to “make champagne” that merchants everywhere, like Joan of Arc, heard rising from their vats of wine.
And so it came to pass that in 1836 a pharmacist from Châlons-sur-Marne with the very patriotic name of M. Jean-Baptiste François, perfected a process for calculating the level of residual sugar after the initial fermentation. For it was known at that time that the wine’s sparkle was due to the slow transformation, inside the bottle, of sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and that in excessive quantities this could result in exploding bottles. However at the end of the century this remained the final obstacle to guaranteed profitability, with breakages occurring at an average of eight per cent; the correct dose of sugar to be added was still not known. Nevertheless, the road for false champagne was open, and was going to widen considerably with the “champagnization” of wine in vats rather than bottles. From that time onwards imitators flourished in Touraine, Jura, Gironde, and in Burgundy itself. Their production, logically enough, went under the name of champagne. Some producers, perhaps a little too effervescent in their imagination, went as far as to put the names of the more famous vineyards of the Marne such as Aÿ, Bouzy, Sillery, Verzy or Verzenay on their labels. The grape growers contented themselves with contemplating the clouds, their usual source of good fortune or of woe and did not think of taking action. However those running the Champagne Houses, whilst they were no less attentive to the weather, did not rely on the sky to tell them when there was a problem, and prepared to defend themselves. Still lacking any formal organization they formed a committee that was to take charge of the legal battle. This was, incidentally, the first act to be taken in defense of the collective interest of the inhabitants of Champagne. The Champagne Houses were the first to have the foresight to act in the interests of both trade and the grape growers of the region.

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Shameful Misrepresentation

     Protective legislation was at the time very lightweight: the law of July 28, 1824 penalized attempts to sell a “manufactured article” by referring to “the name of a place other than that of its manufacture”. It was an uphill battle to get this text applied to wines, of which the natural fermentation was of course influenced by man, and sometimes in a very skilful manner, but which was still far from being a “manufactured article”. The complex issue of the place of birth of a wine - is it the vineyard or the place where the grapes are crushed and fermented – also had to be dealt with. This debate led certain merchants down a rather dubious path, tempting them to exploit the short distance from the vines to the presses to inveigle from judges, who were already mired in the complex legal issues, the right (which the less scrupulous did not even bother with) to transport the wine from one end of France to the other by means of the new and very promising rail road system. However the Champagne Houses prevailed on September 12, 1844 when the Tribunal Correctionnel of Tours found three local merchants guilty of misrepresentation on account of their having:

“displayed on the corks sealing bottles of sparkling wine produced in Touraine the names of places other than those of the place of production, and of having knowingly offered these falsely labeled bottles for sale.”

      The Champagne Houses were delighted by this decision and went to the lengths of proclaiming a section of the text that they found particularly gratifying on posters and in the press:

“It has been established, as a result of legal proceedings and the confession of Mr….…that those charged, Messrs ……., did represent as champagne a sparkling wine that had been produced in Vouvray, thereby misleading customers with information concerning the nature of the merchandise being offered for sale.”

Everything is there: the bad faith of an adversary, the confession of another, and the legal judgment of the whole shameful affair. But most important of all the sparkling wine of Vouvray had been put firmly in its place, and made to seem ridiculous in its attempt to compare itself to the incomparable. Attempts by all three Tourain merchants to appeal against the judgment, and even to have it annulled, were quick to follow; they were probably more mortified by their colleagues’ escape from punishment than by the punishment itself. (The wine producers’ code of conduct may be judged by subtle signs that had passed unnoticed by the magistrates: those of Tourain and elsewhere regarded each other as colleagues, whilst those of Champagne were brothers, perhaps in memory of their Benedictine fore-fathers). But the Court of Blois confirmed the judgment, and on July 12, 1845 the Court of Cassation also remained unmoved by the legal acrobatics of the fraudsters. The clear victory stabilized the situation but did not entirely put an end to these disgraceful abuses of the name of Champagne. On March 4, 1870 the Court of Appeal of Angers, no doubt alerted by the vigilant Champagne Houses, caught a merchant with his hand in the vat, so to speak, shamelessly selling Aÿ mousseux (“sparkling wine from the Aÿ region”), Fleur de Sillery, and Fleur de Bouzy, all of which were of pure Anjou origin.

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The Champagne Houses Fight for their Rights

     The question of the use of the term “Champagne” was not yet closed. It was forbidden to describe something as coming from champagne that had not been made in champagne, but one still had the right to “champagnize” a wine, or even - sin of sins – to champagnize an entire vat of wine using a new technique that enabled the fermentation process to be controlled. And all of this could be sold as “champagne”. Furthermore there was a procedural obstacle to the defense of the name of Champagne: the “quality to act,” as it was referred to by the legal experts, unparalleled in their ability to turn litigants into puppets, regardless of their power or the justness of their cause. In the organizational desert left by the disappearance of the guilds and the corporations, the Champagne Houses could only take legal action against Touraine fraudsters by producing evidence that their wrongful use of the term “Champagne” had caused them direct harm. But “Champagne” referred to a province of the Ancien Régime of which the boundaries had been intentionally lost during the creation of the new “departments”. So whilst it applied to everyone in general, it applied to no one in particular. To protect themselves the Champagne Houses would have to apply to the Procureur de la République, which was specifically charged with defending the common interests of everyone. Suffice to say the Procureur was an extremely busy man, and did not offer much in the way of help. And then of course someone acting in the common interests of everyone would not differentiate between those of the inhabitants of Touraine, Anjou, Burgundy and those of Champagne. The old ban on “coalitions” within the professions persisted, even if during the Second Empire, when the economic structures of modern France were being put into place, the ban seemed untenable and even dangerous. More than ten years after the inglorious fall of “Napoléon-le-Petit” in war, and after the violent uprising despite the war of the Commune de Paris, the professional interests of both employers and workers were clearly, even passionately, identified. But they did not have the right to form their own organizations or to defend themselves. It was not until 1884 that a government presided over by Jules Ferry, barely finished with the great work of secular faith and republican foundation of the Education Nationale, dared to tackle a law authorizing trade unions. The rigorous builder of the great French edifice of professors and school teachers, and who had worked so hard to create a “a great rural democracy” for the Republic, must have been intoxicated at the sight of the tricolor flag fluttering from the rooftop when he slipped the time bomb of unionization into the half finished construction.

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The Union of the Great Names or “Grandes Marques” in Champagne

     Remarkably the Champagne Houses were not expecting this law. On the eve of the harvest of 1882, the Secretary of Commerce sent a letter of complaint to the President of the Chamber of Commerce of Rheims, admonishing him for Champagne’s mediocre levels of export. This was despite their reaching an average of more than seventeen million bottles a year between 1880 and 1890. But there were of course highs and lows, and it was the Secretary had to take responsibility before parliament for poor balance of payments figures. He must have trembled at the prospect of facing the dissatisfaction of the notoriously harsh and powerful Assemblée Nationale, a worthy successor of the even more terrible and ruthless Convention; or perhaps he had just emerged from a particularly turbulent parliamentary session. However, if the Minister had not worked off his bad humor at having to be an unpopular accountant by attacking the quality of the wine itself, then champagne would not be what it is today!….How dare he! This outpouring of republican venom caused the champagne flutes of the suppliers to his late majesty Louis XIV to overflow, and stirred up quite a storm in the cellars!... The heads of the Houses of Heidsieck, Mumm and Moët took the initiative and called a meeting at which the general indignation was expressed in a scathing letter of protest. But ink alone was not enough to calm the storm and an Association Syndicale du Commerce des Vins de Champagne sprang up, fully armed, as a result of the historic meeting of September 19, 1882. This professional body was like a rebel child, and began its life in a state of endearing innocence. The association initially assembled twenty-two Houses, and then sixty after the promulgation of the law of March 21, 1884. The merchants of Saumur, who were bitter rivals of those of Champagne, greeted this new pact with derision but their taunts and jokes fell flat as the association gradually grew in stature. The Union that was to represent the “Grandes Marques” soon revealed itself as the supreme weapon of defense of Champagne’s interests and as a remarkably far-sighted proponent of a policy of quality. From now on the Union was to carry the torch in the fight to safeguard the name of Champagne.

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IV – The Champagne Houses lead the Defense of the Appellation d'Origine

The Houses Regroup before Throwing Down the Glove

The Grandes Marques established Champagne’s Notoriety in the U.S.A. in the Nineteenth Century

The first occasion on which the Champagne Houses deployed their new weapon of the Syndicat de Grandes Marques is of prime importance. It concerned the appellation d'origine, or denomination of origin. In law the question is simple: in the minds of people purchasing and drinking the wine does, and should, the name of Champagne evoke the region where the grapes grow and the cellars have been dug? Or quite the opposite, does it and should it evoke an exportable wine-making technique? In the first case the name “Champagne” is an appellation "d'origine" reserved for wines made from the grapes of the Champagne region. In the second it is what in law is termed a “generic appellation”, no longer applying to the wines of a certain area, but to any on the planet. Formulated today, long after the judicial and even legislative success of the Champagne Houses’ fight, the answer to this question is of course that Champagne is an appellation d’origine: to one and all Champagne is obviously the product of the Champagne region, just as “Bordeaux” and “Burgundy” are regional labels. But today’s situation is entirely due to the tireless efforts of the Houses and their Union. Without the Houses there would have been no Union; they realized the importance of such an organization and, against popular opinion, managed to have it recognized first by the judges and then by legislators. Without Littré’s careful definition, we might be tempted to retrospectively view the union’s battle for appellation d'origine in the blessed and unjust light that victory lends to the victors, and even more so to their many and various descendents.

Let us make no mistake; a century ago champagne the wine was, and with good reason, virtually separated from Champagne the region, as Dijon is from mustard, Marseilles from soap, Bayonne from ham, Montélimar from nougat, and even Cologne from eau, which is, in a sense, ridiculous. Anyone anywhere may manufacture these products, which nevertheless have names of local origin, by applying specific techniques and recipes to ingredients that have no connection with the region itself. Around 1880, the technique of “champagnization” having been mastered, the golden wine was also in the process of being uprooted. It was unlikely that Champagne would ever reinstate the link with its wine that Carrare has never lost with its marble, Cholet with its handkerchiefs, Vallauris with its pottery, and Puy with its lace and its famous lentils!

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The Charge against Saumur

      The Champagne Houses were keenly aware of this danger, and chose to attack their most obvious opponents, the merchants of Touraine. One might consider that the particular impudence of the people of the Loire Valley in copying Champagne could have deep-seated historical reasons. The Loire Valley had produced sparkling wines for a long time, which in the past had had their hour of glory: it is not impossible that the cellar masters of Louis XIV had above all not wanted to share their sparkling success with those of François I ! The Union’s choice was in any case wise: Champagne is next to Burgundy and Jura, which would have made a confrontation, even a judicial one, dangerous for civil peace. Champagne shares no borders with the Loire region. The choice was also courageous because the wine merchants of Saumur were big Champagne customers. A point that they respectfully emphasized in an attempt to dissuade the Champenois when, following the usual legal procedure, an order to cease their blatant abuse of Champagne’s name was courteously but firmly served. They obviously underestimated the Syndicat de Grandes Marques who remained unmovable and with swords drawn before the Tribunal de Commerce of Saumur. The fight was vigorous, and the Rheims camp threw themselves head-long into battle.

“The wines of Saumur are completely different from those of Champagne…sharing neither their bouquet nor their finesse !”

     Some of the taunts bordered on cruelty:

“The nature of the wines from each region may be judged by their enormous difference in price!”

     The merchants of Saumur based their counter-attack on sound commercial logic by using the verb “to champagnize” at every opportunity, and in every language, and pointing out that it was not only the whole of France that champagnized wines but also Russia, England, Switzerland, Germany, the Crimea, Hungary, California, and others... Their tactic was to submerge the regional traditions of the past in a flood of modern technology and new business practices. In order for it to belong to everyone they attempted to dilute Champagne’s name in the insipid waters of the public domain, in the same way that a great work can become hackneyed through overuse. Given the context this tactic was very effective, and the resolve of the Rheims camp was seriously put to the test. But they did not falter, in fact, further enraged, their determination only increased. Saumur however had been keeping a secret weapon in store:

“Those from Champagne come here with their superior airs and think to lecture us ! And yet there is Loire wine in the champagne of Champagne, we know because we sold it to some of them!”

     This potentially catastrophic blow caused a moment’s hesitation in the ranks of the attackers. The consular judges, their breath quite taken away, decided to take a moment to retire and deliberate. The Champagne side of the courtroom feared the worse, and with reason. When the judges returned from their endless recess they seemed slightly nervous and would not look the Champenois in the eye. The President, seated between two assessors who were suddenly captivated by their nails, read the judgment in a barely audible voice. The timid decision sounded like a death knell: the name of Champagne is public…it belongs to everyone! And anyone has the complete and unqualified right to “champagnize” the fruits of their labors and to sell any sparkling wine they pleased as champagne!... The ground opened beneath the feet of the unhappy Champenois.…That fifth of April in 1886 was a terrible day for the Champagne Houses, and indeed for the whole of Champagne! No one dared to imagine that perhaps one of the judges, a Saumur merchant elected by his peers, might have been influenced by an undeclared interest, and we have no reason to believe that that was the case. One must however admire the sang-froid of the defenders of Champagne, who left the courtroom without a word and went calmly to Angers to launch an indignant appeal that must have held little hope.

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The Splendid Victory of Angers

The Soldiers of Champagne Win the Day!

     This setback would probably have led the Champagne Houses to refine their arguments and to present a more watertight case than at the unseasoned and disappointing charge of Saumur. It is also not unlikely that the career magistrates that made up the Court of Appeal were better placed than their colleagues at the Tribunal de Commerce, who were elected by the trade, to consider the legal aspects and the far-sightedness of the views of the Syndicat du Champagne. In any case on July19, 1887 the Court of Angers passed a remarkable judgment that completely annulled that of Saumur, and that both formulated and resolved the difficult dispute with the unquestionable authority of superior understanding.

“It is considered that, contrary to that accepted by the first judges, one cannot consider the designation of the Wines of Champagne, or that of Champagne (with a capital letter) as applying to all sparkling wines in general, and consequently to sparkling wines produced in Saumur;”

“that this designation, applied to the wines of Saumur, is as abusive and as false as if it were applied to the sparkling wines of Anjou, implying that the means of production of different sparkling wines are the same everywhere, which is far from having been demonstrated.”

      The lesson in justice given in passing to the consular judges of Saumur by the magistrates of Anjou was discreet but severe. And it demonstrates that an expert wine-maker form a Champagne House had persuaded the Court that the miraculous technique of Champagne’s “champagnization” was the original technique and that it was unique to Champagne. Those magistrates would never be able to open a bottle of champagne again without reflecting on the vats and cellars in question, and being reminded of the complexities of this case. Won over they continued in their judgment, declaring that,

“indeed, the word Champagne (again with a capital letter) indicates both the place of production and manufacture of wines that are specifically known by this name, and not other wines; that it is of little concern that the wines of Champagne are not entirely of local origin, like those of Bordeaux or Burgundy for example, and also that they do not owe their qualities solely to the soil from which they are produced, but partly from special production and storage processes, given that the law of July 28, 1824 specifically forbids a false declaration of a place of manufacture.”

     The collaboration of the wine and legal experts of the Champagne Houses performed wonders in the courtroom. And on the very dangerous charge of misrepresentation brought by the Saumur merchants against certain newly arrived Champagne merchants, the ruling was supreme and offers a lesson in business ethics that will never be forgotten, at least not by the inhabitants of Rheims and Epernay:

“It is not considered more serious that certain producers, even those of the Marne, purchase and add wines to their vats that do not originate from the former province of Champagne, than the fact that sparkling wines produced abroad are sold under the name of Champagne; for one misrepresentation may not be used to justify another.”

And on that inspired day the court’s sense of justice knew no bounds. Not only did it condemn the merchant of Saumur to exchange his role of righteous citizen for that of guilty scapegoat, it also obliged him to advertise his shame:

“The Court orders the publication of the present decree as follows: a total of one hundred public notices to be posted in Saumur, Angers, Paris, in the department of the Marne, and abroad at the expense of L... and, excepting the Syndicat to distribute this number of notices in the various localities, as notified and to a total of twenty-five insertions, also at the expense of L... and in those newspapers of the towns and departments additionally listed and those abroad as specified by the Syndicat.”

This harsh ruling showed little consideration for the “expense of L….” and included “abroad”, which meant the entire world, thus launching a veritable crusade for the purification of the sparkling wine market. In a masterly fashion it elevated commercial ethics, so often threatened by corruption, like low ground constantly being flooded, to a new much higher level. The ruling was a triumph for the Champagne Houses affiliated with the Syndicat de Grandes Marques, which in passing was granted the power to nobly defend the legal interests of the champagne trade. It is more than likely that at the end of July 1887 the cellars of Épernay, Rheims and Châlons-sur-Marne saw considerably more bottles depart than usual, and that the ruling, which had effectively saved Champagne, and that no one had dared to hope for, was noisily celebrated.

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V – Champagne Houses: the Soul of Wine-Producing Champagne

The Grandes Marques behind AOC Champagne

Guerilla Warfare in the Courtroom

      However, a legal ruling always concerns an individual case, and a court of law is not obliged, between new parties, to make the same ruling as a court has made elsewhere or even the same court on a previous occasion. This is hardly satisfactory, but whilst it may be discouraging for some it kindles the hopes of others, and the effectiveness of a legal system improves not so much in terms of output than as a function of its own continuity, true justice alas being practically out of the question. When it came to being hard of hearing or unbending the judges of France acted in a fashion that no doubt encouraged those litigants in whom perseverance and despondency seem to go strangely together. And also, in the perilous and imperfect style that makes the art of justice, the endless game of prolongation is, ultimately, not without wisdom. Justice and injustice take part in the dream, and nothing is better than an impossible administration to teach those to be tried, slowly but surely, to make allowances. No doubt stung by the lesson at Angers, the Tribunal of Saumur, this time a magistrate’s court, played the rebel. In a judgment on November 23, 1888, it dismissed the case of a local merchant who was selling “sparkling champagne-top quality monopole” by deliberately invoking the generic appellation that was brushed aside by the Court of Appeal. A ruling on April 11, 1889 from the Court of Angers restored it to its place. And the Court of Cassation backed up this decision with a ruling on July 26, 1889. (No buts !) However, whilst this ermine decree to cease an argument that had started over three years ago may have been the last word for respectable judges and honest lawyers, the abuse of Champagne’s name was not over. The tactics employed only became more exotic or discreet: “Saumur-Champagne”, “Champagne de Charente”, (or there was apparently “une Champagne”); all appeared on certain dubious labels. “Finest Champagne imported from Saumur”, claimed one, relying on both the geographical ignorance of the English and a lack of attention from Champagne. But the untiring Syndicat de Grandes Marques was there and sprang to the defense every time. Its sly enemies attempted counter-attacks at the Tribunal de Commerce de Reims and before the Court of Appeal of Paris, but happily without success. In 1892, the appellation d'origine of Champagne was virtually established, and in a law passed on April 13 France ratified the Convention of Madrid, which provided the basis for international recognition of regional appellations of wine products. This treaty also generalized the practice of “appellation d'origine” to other regional products; a practice that had been requested and developed by the wine industry and much supported by the Champagne Houses.

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The Houses Continue the Fight!

     On August 1, 1905 a law was passed to curb the general excesses of producers’ freedom in relation to customers. After a century of profitable abuse loyalty amongst merchant guilds became a thing of the past as citizens began to discover they were consumers after having been, foremost, producers. In the France of the Belle Epoque period, the deceiver and the deceived facing each other across the counter were like a man in front of a mirror: they had become one and the same person. It was time for legislation that would end the free market environment that had been created by the removal of the guilds. The text provided for government imposed rules concerning what information should be displayed on products concerning their ingredients and origin. Paradoxically the Syndicat du Champagne seized on this provision, which was designed to protect consumers, and used it to affirm the Houses’ long standing policy of superior quality. The Champagne Houses threw themselves at the mercy of customer demand at the dawn of the century, thereby making a strategic choice that was both courageous and clever. They projected the future on the basis of the past: the descendents of the suppliers to the Sun-King remained faithful in their respect of times past and the pleasure of their sovereign customer, and so the ancestors of the luxury industries anticipated the reign of today’s customer-king. In pursuit of this powerful idea the Syndicat du Champagne suggested a policy to the Minister for Agriculture, who was after all supposed to concern himself with such matters. First, they proposed a precise definition of the boundaries that enclosed the “wine-producing region of Champagne”; second, they requested that exclusivity of the name of “Champagne” be reserved for wines “harvested and produced entirely within the area known as the wine-producing region of Champagne”; and finally, they called for the use of the name of “Champagne” to be forbidden to all wines rendered effervescent by the use any artificial process, unless this was carried out in Champagne with wines produced in the Champagne region. These requests went further than a simple geographical definition of the Champagne area. They also concerned the technical definition of the wine itself, and together they formed a whole. The Houses’ vision was clear and far-sighted, and this was not so much the result of a miraculous stroke of genius as of the accumulated wisdom of an old and by nature privileged trade. The international exporters of the light-headed tipsiness of the elite were remarkably clear-headed about the future. They had the chance to make a castle of champagne and they knew it. They just needed the government authorities to set the boundaries of the domain and to stamp the bottle-shaped ingots of pale gold.

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The Alliance of the Houses and the Grape growers

     But what exactly were the boundaries of this region within which wines had the right to the name of Champagne? The vineyards of Champagne lay neither entirely in the old province of that name nor entirely in one of the new departments. The outlining of the actual Champagne by an administration in clogs would raise very serious problems. The government officials proposed to limit the castle’s grounds to the vineyards along the banks of the Marne, and to those on the mountain of Rheims and the slopes of the Avize where Champagne was historically born. This represented the heart of the department of the Marne and a few communes in the Château-Thierry district in Aisne. For the traditional Champagne Houses and the grape growers of the Marne who had formed the Fédération des Syndicats de la Champagne in Aÿ in 1904, the narrow boundaries proposed by the administration were more or less satisfactory. But there was rumbling from the wine-producers of the Côte des Bar: the planned delimitation would cast their vines into that sea of grapes without nobility. The situation was aggravated by the fact that they had just been refused inclusion within the boundaries of the wine-producing region of Burgundy. Despairing, they feared financial ruin, a tragedy likely to pass unnoticed in the France of Monsieur Fallières. Launching an S.O.S., they brandished Troyes which had been the capital of the grand old province of Champagne, before being reduced by the Assemblée Constituante to a mere county town. They invoked the “loyal and constant practices” which resulted in their wines making excellent champagne and even being used in the most prestigious blends. And indeed, despite having different soil and grape varieties from the Marne Valley, they were latecomers to the champagne market. The dispute became more heated, with an official technical study, and one commission after another; gradually the tide began to turn against the grape growers of the Côte des Bar. Sensing a change in the wind their negotiators contested that any ameliorative decision, that would be radical enough to cut off Champagne off from its Aube member rather than retaining it, might be ordered by decree. Montgneux and the Council of State became involved, given the importance and persistent nature of the case, and the matter went as far as Clémenceau, the President of the Council, who was not yet known as “the tiger”, but did not have a reputation for kindness either. The decree of December 17, 1908 was passed, and the regional appellation of “Champagne” was henceforth reserved for the wines of all the sub-districts of Châlons-sur-Marne, Rheims and Épernay, and those of the sub-districts of Vitry and Heiltz-le-Maurupt in the district of Vitry-le-François, for the sub-districts of Condé-en-Brie, Château-Thierry and Charly in the district of Château-Thierry, and the sub-districts of Braine and Vailly in the district of Soissons. The interests of the departments of the Marne and Aisne were served, but the Côte des Bar and Montgueux were left out in the cold.

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A War of Corks

The texts of regulations and laws are like wire: even if they are barbed to deter infringement, there are always loop holes. The fraudulent activities of certain wine merchants and the poverty of the grape growers was to stretch the decree of December 17, 1908 almost to breaking point. It was true that as the result of exceptionally difficult circumstances, the Fédération des Syndicats de la Champagne that represented the ten thousand or so grape growers of the Marne was having difficulty in negotiating with the Syndicat des Maisons over the setting of reasonable prices for grapes.

Corks in the Old Days Were Not Very Airtight!

The haughty reply was that the duty of the grand “Syndicat du Commerce” was to defend the interests of Champagne, and everyone concerned, in France, and abroad, but that it was not within its remit to apply pressure to a delicate market that had to be free if it was to remain healthy... The guerrilla warfare of champagne and its foreign policy obviously captivated these gentlemen, who neglected the day to day problems of administration and failed to notice the trouble that was brewing due to the weakness of the wine growers and the craftiness of certain newly arrived wine merchants. It should be said that the “fraudulent activities” consisted of making champagne with wines that did not come from Champagne, this might have been profitable in the short term for unscrupulous merchants because they sold it as champagne, but it was strangling the grape growers of Champagne who had to struggle to sell their fragile and not always plentiful grapes. In January 1911, after several mediocre vintages and then another disaster, the grape growers of the Marne, furious at the scale of the fraud, ransacked the cellars at Damery and Hautvillers. The army had to be called in to reestablish order. The grape growers of the Côte des Bar were also on the move, but they sought the abolition of Clémenceau’s decree, and not, obviously, its reinforcement. The government was caught in the crossfire. It attempted to appease the Marne grape growers by announcing the “complementary measures” which were to be introduced in the law of February 10, 1911, and to calm those of the Aube by offering them, in a typically parliamentary scheme, a kind of “Second Class Champagne” or “Champagne Inférieure” in a decree that would be promulgated on June 7, 1911. They effectively promised to those already inside the castle that they would raise the drawbridges, and to those outside that they would provide ladders to help them scale the walls. What was bound to happen happened: both sides felt cheated and rose up in revolt. The Aubois, who had the law against them, contented themselves with hitting the entire department with massive strikes and impressive demonstrations that meandered angrily but peaceably through the streets. But the Marnais had the law on their side and had already warmed up with the riots in January: they marched in broad daylight in bands representing each vineyard and, to the strains of the “Champenoise”, went on the rampage. One fine day in April 1911, at the break of day, they swept over the hillsides with stakes, hail-guards and bugles, shouting “death to the swindlers” ! The 31st Dragoons were taken by surprise and had to be reinforced by the Chasseurs. Venteuil and Trépail bristled with barricades, the red flag flew over Damery, Vertus wavered and then succumbed, Dizy and above all Ay were sacked and burnt, Pierry was damaged, and Épernay itself, although well entrenched also saw violence. In order to restore order 31 cavalry units and 26 companies of infantry had to occupy the vineyards for six months ! A Colonel Blimp was to publish a work with the catchy title of “Mes campagnes en Champagne” (My Campaigns in Champagne) !

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VI – The Union of the Houses and the Grape Growers Sets the Scene for Peace

An End to Fraud

Justice and Light for Champagne

A law passed on June 29, 1907 obliged grape growers throughout France to make a “declaration of harvest” to the local town hall. This measure that had every grape picker keeping an eye on his or her neighbor, and made everyone liable to checks from the Inland Revenue, virtually removed any margin for fraud amongst the grape growers. But the cheating of certain unscrupulous wine merchants installed in town and benefiting from the sacrosanct freedom of trade, was another matter ! Under pressure due to the extremely serious events already described, the legislators decided to vote in the so called complementary measures that called together, it should be emphasized, the Syndicat du Commerce and the Fédération des Syndicats de Vignerons, and which the Minister for Finance, Joseph Caillaux, had for some years refused to return, partly it would seem out of consideration for the work that it would generate for his civil servants. The law of February 10, 1910 ordered that the word “Champagne” should henceforth appear in “very clear letters” on the cases, labels and even the corks, imprisoned in the transparent neck of the bottles. Furthermore, shrewd merchants could no longer engage in wine dealing under the roof of their cellar, as champagnes had to be:

“stored, handled and packed in separate premises, and without any communication other than by public highway, with premises housing the harvest or wines foreign to the region.”

     This decree provided the Houses, growers and consumers of Champagne with the means of extinguishing fraud. The terrible days in April were proof, by fire, of the attachment of the Marne grape growers to the policy of quality conceived and ultimately imposed by the Syndicat de Grandes Marques de Champagne, which was sometimes haughty and awkward, but obviously very clear-headed and honest: it was not be deceived on the matter of what was of general interest.

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The Champagne Zone

      As for the grape growers of the Côte des Bar, they now knew what to expect in terms of the solidity of the Marne castle. If they wanted to escape the unjust poverty that threatened them they had only to swallow a little of their excessive pride in order to accept what the administration was offering them: an entrance to the domain. They did not accept without considerable grumbling, and with reason, but they could they do little against what was already in place, and so solidly established. The decree of June 7, 1911, approved by the Council of State, which is supposed to iron out any errors, collected up those who had been left out in the delimitation of 1908. One might imagine such names as “Petite Champagne” or “Basse Champagne” for the new grape producing region, but the government officials, obviously in touch with what might please rich New Yorkers or the Princes of Arabia, imposed the awful, “Champagne deuxième zone” (“Second zone champagne”). And the grape growers of the districts of Bar-sur-Seine and Bar-sur-Aube, those of the sub-district of Chavanges in the district of Arcis-sur-Aube, those of Villenauxe in the district of Nogent-sur-Seine, and also those of the district of Wassy and the communes of Nanteuil and Citry, received the modest honor of being allowed to produce “Sous-Champagne”. The grape growers of these regions could from now on sit at the masters’ table, but on a stool. Outrage began to stir and, it must be said, they came very close to taking their turn at brandishing the stakes, hail-guards and bugles that had worked so well for the grape growers of the Marne. However the government saw the blow coming and the parliament was not the kind to be intimidated by threats: it preempted an uprising by promising that in future the courts would have the power to set the complex boundaries of the “grape growing region of Champagne”. At the moment when the Court of Assizes was preparing to judge the leaders of the April riots, the maneuver was devious, but not without its merits.

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The Truce of the Great War

The grape growers of the Aube had to wait until 1919 for the promise to be fulfilled, but there was little risk of them feeling cheated. The ravages of the Great War made the battle of the corks seem like a charming pastime. The quarrels over labels may have become heated but at the end of the day remained friendly. They all disappeared in a cloud of dust as the real war exploded, the war from which people either returned deeply changed or not at all, the war that was the end of a world. The explosion was to strike the heart of Champagne. The Battle of the Marne raged through the vineyards for four years as the pitiless cruelty of trench warfare took its toll on countless ranks of young men. Most unbelievable of all was neither the suddenness with which all this occurred nor the cost in terms of human life. Ultimately it was not illogical that the powerful, constructive and ferocious social disorder that had been transforming Europe for more than a century should have created a catalogue of shortages, destruction and unpleasantness that was now being hurled back into the face of history, as a massive wake up call for those who had been foolishly and too long obsessed with the cold machinery of the politics of national states. This Faustian dimension is also evident in the golden story of Champagne. For with hindsight there was much that could have been learnt in 1911 from the spectacle offered in the beloved vineyards of the Benedictine monks, of thousands of soldiers, come to contain the anger of the impoverished grape growers that had been stirred up by a few cheating merchants.

Champagne Defends its Soil but Offers its Wines !

The unfortunate scene offers a clear image of social collapse and prefigures the abyss of the approaching war. What is truly unbelievable is that after the horrors of the “war to end all wars” the war of the corks was able to recommence, as if a patient, after four years of madness, had recovered his original character and all of its wonderful extravagance.

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The Victory of Aube

     The law of May 6, 1919 began by closing the debate that had been raging before the war by targeting for one last time the courtroom rebels of Saumur and elsewhere:

“The appellations of origin of wine products may never be considered to be of a generic character or to fall within the public domain.”

      It then opened a new debate by referring any dispute over the origin of a wine to the civil court in the area of the appellation concerned. The law required judges to examine each case on the basis of the provenance of the wine, but also to consider the locality’s “loyal and constant local practices”. The Aube had at last been given its ladder. It was certainly a narrow escape.... The sparring recommenced in the courtrooms and the delimitations of 1900 and 1911 were challenged. The same arguments supported the same interests: but this time the outcome was decided by a court rather than a minister. The confrontation had had time to age and the legal issues to become clearer: for certain areas of the Marne the “local practices” could only serve to reduce the geographical region of origin; whilst in the Aube the opposite applied and it could be expanded. The civil court of Bar-sur-Aube showed great ingenuity in extricating itself from this impasse. On February 25 and March 11, 1921, it was judged that the soil itself may well merit an appellation of origin, but that the appellation could be confirmed, enlarged or reduced depending on the practices that took place above it. It was also judged that nothing could prove that wine-producing Aube had ever lost the custom of considering itself as part of Champagne, or that it had ever accepted itself as a sub-Champagne. It was a very satisfactory invitation for the Aube to join the party. The court of Bar-sur-Seine, in a slightly less sophisticated mood, took a similar decision on July 1, 1921, declaring simply that, since the Aube had been a suburb of the capital of the former province of Champagne, its wine had the right to be called by that name. Never mind the legal subtleties of the affair, the key point is that the delighted plaintiffs outside the castle now had the right to join the furious ones already inside, where, in a rather chilly atmosphere, it was beginning to get a little crowded.

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Harmony at Last

Nobody was particularly happy but nobody wanted to carry on arguing either. In parliament the wisdom of having peace in the vineyards, inspired by Aristide Briand, overtook the general lassitude: “let us evoke the spirit of Locarno amongst the grape growers !" And the road to peace was finally laid down in a parliamentary arbitration that was to become the law of July 22, 1927. The Syndicat du Commerce, a veteran of the courtrooms, understood that the time had come to reconcile the differences that existed over delimitation and to channel everyone’s energy towards working for general prosperity. The prospect of real peace was enough to get the gentlemen of the Syndicat back in the saddle who was saw an opportunity to improve the position of Champagne in terms of quality. The law of 1927, which confirms everyone’s agreement, bears their mark.

     Straight away the new text repaired an omission of the law of 1919 which had neglected to sanction the requirement, won in the courtroom by the Champagne Houses before the war, that champagne must be produced in Champagne itself. The wines that Germany had a tendency to acquire and “champagnize” at home, no doubt to drown the sorrow of their defeat, would from now on remain in Champagne. Most important of all the new law imposed uniformity of grape variety, to which the Aube agreed to conform after, of course, a period of transition. It was compensation for the acceptance with good grace by the Marnais of the new arrivals from the Aube that the courts had just installed. In 1934, the Houses put the finishing touches to this new stability by having a law passed that completely banned the production of sparkling wines within the boundaries of wine producing Champagne, except of course the very special sparkling wine of champagne.

     And in the mood of general reconciliation the five communes who had made the mistake of trying to save legal fees, and even the seven who had inexplicably displeased the Court of Appeal in Paris, were all invited back into the fold. They know how to make amends in Champagne! The grape growers were finally reconciled and united into one large happy family by the Syndicat de Grandes Marques. The entire world, apart from America where the puritanical zeal of prohibition reigned, could enjoy the great champagnes of Champagne!

Text: Eric Glâtre (Doctor of History)
(in collaboration with Michel-Jean Hanser-Schaffhauser)

Sources: the doctoral thesis in law (and bibliography) of Roger Hodez, published by the presse universitaires de France in 1923 and available in the Carnégie Library in Rheims.

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