I am not trying to becomes the UK’s most prolific blogger and nor to create the most comprehensive champagne blog, but hopefully these jottings help you to sneak a peek under the petticoats of this amazing wine.
So in response to Toby, the CIVC dictate how many kilos of grapes per hectare can be harvested. As a rule of thumb guide, it takes 1kg of grapes to create one bottle (750ml) of champagne. Typically the permitted yield is about 12,000kg per hectare; last year it was 14,000kg but this year, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal, it is going to be 9,700kg.
As Non-Vintage champagne is typically aged in bottle for a minimum of two years (by law it must be 15 months and Nomine prescribe a minimum of three years), you can envisage the vast number of bottles snoozing in cellars all over the region. The global slowdown in consumption could lead to significant over supply if it takes a while for sales to recover (export and French domestic – France is the largest consumer by miles), so I suspect that 2009′s restricted yield is intended to avoid this as much as to preserve quality.
Has the World forgotten Winston Churchill’s musing (apparently adapted from Napoleon) that “in victory we deserve it (champagne) and in defeat we need it”?! Interesting fact that Churchill’s Pol Roger champagne consumption increased in 1942 from its 1941 levels – much to the angst of the budget bureaucrats – as the tempo of World War II accelerated, according to facts from the Churchill museum at the Cabinet War Rooms. Proof indeed of the universal relevance of champagne!
And all this on the 70th anniversary of the day Britain had to declare war on Germany; wow!
1 comment
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Alastair says:
January 15, 2010 at 6:17 am (UTC 1 )
Yep – all from scratch. Learn a lot quite quickly so the new release later this year will be subtly but significantly better.
Champagne exports | Alastair's Blog says:
April 21, 2011 at 3:17 pm (UTC 1 )
[...] yields reduced by negotiation to below 10,000kg/ha from 14,400 the previous year as I reported in harvest yields. Assuming consumption steadies at 2009 levels then the inventory in French cellars will fall back [...]