31 October, 2001

First fall for the young ones


Most of the new Meunier-vines have survived the summer. October 2006.

Six months ago we planted 425 new Meunier-vines in the plot at Loisy-en-Brie.

They got some good mould tucked around the roots. But since they have had to deal with wind and weather and disease on their own. And most - about 90 percent - have survived.


August 2006, Loisy-en-Brie.

The rest has been overcome by disease. Some were eaten by rabbits, others were attacked by the disease oïdium I do not know if that is too many. From a statistical point of view that is. But it adds up in about half a day of wasted work which is already annoying.

A strong plant
Young vines like these do not yet produce grapes like the fully grown vines. Grapes grow on one year old shoots, that will grow from the buds that already by now have been created. Even they may not yet be very visible.

However, the young plants will not produce any grapes for the next vendange. During the first years of the life of a plant, the aim of the pruning is to secure good and strong wood. By removing most of the buds you help the young plant to focus on its own growth rather than producing fruits.

Only the third year you leave so many buds that the young vine will produce a bigger amount of grapes.




April 2006, Loisy-en-Brie.

A fully developed vine will produce around 1,2 kilos of grapes. You use 1,6 kilos of grapes to produce a bottle of champagne.

På dansk

Copyright: The copyright for text and photos at bobler.blogspot.com belongs to Solveig Tange. You may use my articles, photos or parts of them for non-commercial use and if I am credited as the author. Feel free to link to this site but not in your own frameset please.

28 October, 2001

007 drinks Bollinger once again


You find the name of Bollinger outside vineyards in the best areas of Champagne - the Grand and Premier Cru.

In a few weeks James Bond will be let loose on the white screen for the 21st time. And I guess, it will be known by most, that Her Britannic Majesty's secret agent has a very exclusive taste when it comes to everything from sportscars to ladies, from electronic gadgets to alcoholic drinks. Champagne as well.

Which is why, James Bond - this time personified by Daniel Craig - in "Casino Royale" for the 10th time will swallow a champagne from a house, that is usually mentioned with much devotion, namely the house of Bollinger. (Find the accurate match of movies and cuvées here.)

The right cuvée for the occasion
Quite suitable for the occasion Bollinger is bringing out its latest version of the cuvée, Grande Année these days. And I'll eat my hat if it will not be the very same, that our superhero will gulp down on sheets of silk in a few week's time.

This version of the Grande Année is from 1999. It is a blend of 17 different clear wines (crus). 82% from Grand Cru-areas and the rest from Premier Cru-areas. 63% are Pinot Noir-wines and the rest Chardonnay-wines. I'll bet it is wonderful. If you like the style.

Because certainly not everybody shares this taste in champagnes. A lot of Danes - according to my not statistically representative experience - may prefer a champagne with slightly more sugar in the dosage, and with more Chardonnay-grapes in it than you often find in the champagnes of Bollinger. There is surely a champagne for each taste.

Brits love Bollinger
But agent 007 likes his Bollinger. Which is pretty good marketing, since James Bond in the text of the original novel drinks a glass of champagne four times, and none of them contains Bollinger. Check it out here.

In Great Britain the dry style of Bollinger has been popular since the days of Queen Victoria, and the taste of James Bond just adds to the publicity of the house, that is one of the last independant and family-owned in Champagne.

If you'll scratch my back, I'll scratch yours... Maybe that is why, visitors to the production facilities of Bollinger can discover a big collection of movieposters on the white walls in several of rooms. You are free to guess which movies.


The elegant villa of Bollinger in the village of Aÿ, close to Épernay, one of the capitals of champagne. The other is Reims.

"Casino Royale" has its first night on November 17th. As a Dane I am looking forward to see Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen as super villain.

På dansk

Copyright: The copyright for text and photos at bobler.blogspot.com belongs to Solveig Tange. You may use my articles, photos or parts of them for non-commercial use and if I am credited as the author. Feel free to link to this site but not in your own frameset please.

27 October, 2001

First starlings are here


Flocks of starlings at Avize, October 2005.

I have seen the first starlings circle over the lower vineyards of Verzy.

That autumn is now here is sure. The floor in our garage does not really dry any more. The dew falls heavily at night, and we now see the sun so briefly in our plot, that the ground does not stand a chance to dry before the day is over. Even we still have the most beautiful October sunshine you can imagine.

Yesterday I spend all afternoon talking in the kitchen of a friend. As we around 5 o'clock PM peeped out of her front door, it felt almost like a crime having stayed inside all afternoon on a day with temperatures reaching almost 20 degrees Celsius.

In Northern Scandinavia the temperature now spends more time below than above zero, and I suppose this is what has persuaded the flocks of birds to go South. The starlings are the first migrating birds I see this year.

They eat the grapes that are left on the vines, and usually stay until cold weather forces them to move further south. But with the currently mild temperatures they may be tempted to have a long stay this year.

In English

Copyright: Ophavsretten til tekst og billeder på bobler.blogspot.com tilhører Solveig Tange. Mine artikler, billeder eller dele af dem må ikke gengives andre steder, uden at jeg fremstår som forfatteren. Du er velkommen til at linke, sålænge du ikke åbner i eget framesæt.

25 October, 2001

Add some wooden chips


Wooden chips may not be very pretty, but it is practical as cover when you work in a vineyard.

The last driving a tractor through the vineyards this year are expected to have two
consequences.

The first is to cover the floor of the vineyard thoroughly with a load of wooden chips. That should create severe conditions for the very vigorous weeds, that currently have a great time in 42 rows of vines, that we will take over by November 1st. We would rather see less of the current green happiness in the years to come.

The chips will also make it more easy to walk up and down the rows without sliding. When there is a lot of weeds, this collects the moisture, thus making the weeds very slippery in the autumn and winter seasons.


We would prefer to see less of this green splendour and want to cover it under a layer of wooden chips as soon as possible.

Secondly a tractor going up and down the same 42 rows may have some less nice consequences for the rickety combination of wires and posts, that are supposed to help the vines to stand up in the light. I wonder if it may not in reality in this case actually be the vines that holds the wires. A terrible thought.

Driver and vehicle is ordered. As for the rest there is only hope and prayers left.

In English

Copyright: Ophavsretten til tekst og billeder på bobler.blogspot.com tilhører Solveig Tange. Mine artikler, billeder eller dele af dem må ikke gengives andre steder, uden at jeg fremstår som forfatteren. Du er velkommen til at linke, sålænge du ikke åbner i eget framesæt.



You can still find lots of grapes that have matured late. They taste wonderful.

23 October, 2001

The green vineyard


Green is not always a colour that pleases the eye. The weeds are unfortunately very vigorous in our new vineyard, and that promotes disease.

As we wait for the first statements about the still wines and their potentials, there is new work coming up in the fields.

We are to take over a new plot at the end of this month. It is situated above the one we already deal with. This weekend Alain has spend some time to check it out a bit more thoroughly. As expected it is a rather sad sight.

5000 square metres of misery
The new plot consists of 42 rows that are 100 metres long, all in all 5000 square metres with about 3500 vines, that are badly pruned. 42 rows full of weeds, and around 12 percent of the plants affected by the disease esca. Plants, that must be removed as fast as we can.

With kilometres of wires and new posts in a condition, that will hardly survive meeting the tracors next spring, and on top of that the soil covered with weeds as dense and thick as a fashionable carpet from the 1970'ies, there is work for the next years to put this plot at the same level as the other one.

And I have not even mentioned the pruning, which you can call creative, if you want to be really nice.. To bring it up-to-date with the rules, that pruning-teacher Stéphanie tought me at the school in Avize, will take years.




Grapeharvest finally ended
However, no matter the 42 rows look sad right now, they still represent an important step for us on the way of getting our own names on the labels of our champagne. Quite an event, coincideng with the longest grapeharvest as long as anyone can remember.

It finally ended yesterday. Officially and with lots of sun. However, we have not seen anyone picking grapes the last two weeks, neither in the Côte des Blancs nor the Montagne de Reims. But it has been possible and allowed to press until yesterday, which has made the grapeharvest of 2006 almost the double of normal years when it comes to number of days.

It began on September 7th at Sezanne in the southern part of the Côte des Blancs, that last communes only began on September 23th, which is unusual, and is linked with the weather of 2006.

The expections are good with a sugar level at 10 percent and a acidity number of 7. I have seen different opinions regarding the possibilities of having yet another millésime-vintage. Some says that the potential is not good enough, others that it is fine. We shall see. As spring approaches.


Seen from above the new vineyard looks nice. But it possesses quite a few horrible details.

På dansk

Copyright: The copyright for text and photos at bobler.blogspot.com belongs to Solveig Tange. You may use my articles, photos or parts of them for non-commercial use and if I am credited as the author. Feel free to link to this site but not in your own frameset please.

21 October, 2001

Golden ace of Armand

Neither Krug nor Dom won themselves a new customer this summer in the wake of the American hiphop artist Jay-Z's very mentioned boycott of the topchampagne of Louis Roederer, Cristal.

Instead a rather unknown champagnemaker - Armand de Brignac - based in the village Chigny-les-Roses in the Montagne de Reims, can probably look forward to increasing sales the next years, after the singer has chosen "The Ace" as his preferred fizz. In the USA anyway, which is the first place outside France where the familyfirm has now begun to market their champagne.

Kitsch or class?
The bottle itself - gilt and with a metal label in the shape of the Ace of Spades - tries to find a balance between kitsch and vulgarity. I am not convinced that they manage, but as you know, the customer is always right. Don't they know it at Louis Roederer's. Check out for yourself in Jay-Z's latest video here.

The American manager of Armand de Brignac, Brett Berish, says to the winemagazine Decanter, that he is honoured with the interest. It has probably provided him a job as well.

Cristal or "The Ace"
There has been an incredible silence around the sales - or no sales maybe - of Cristal since a few comments from the Roederer-boss provoked the boycott right before the silly season began in June.

But Cristal will probably manage just fine even without being bought by Jay-Z. Just like it survived the fall of the Russian tsars, eventually anyway.

I am not quite convinced that the taste of "The Ace" is too important when then band plays... but if someone happens to be interested in that part of the party too, they can read more about the golden bubbles in the American part of cyberspace.

På dansk

Copyright: The copyright for text and photos at bobler.blogspot.com belongs to Solveig Tange. You may use my articles, photos or parts of them for non-commercial use and if I am credited as the author. Feel free to link to this site but not in your own frameset please.

20 October, 2001

Vines for wine only for professionals


Vine in autumn colours outside one of the champagnehouses of Verzy.

Our local paper likes the idea of closeness to the readers. A way to demonstrate this is to answer their various questions on everything you can imagine on page 2 and publish the answer the next day.

Some days ago I stumbled into an interesting question in our region: Can you skip the lawn and plant Pinot Noir or Chardonnay all over your garden? The subsoil in Champagne after all is perfect to grow and store wine. Almost too good an opportunity to miss. So of course you cannot.

Vines that produce grapes for wine are subdued rules and laws just like so many other subthemes regarding growing and producing wines. If you are not a winegrower, you must stick to decorative vines such as the amandin and the perdin or to vines that produce tables grapes such as the chasselas doré and the muscat says Jean-Mary Tarlant, who is chairman of the syndicate of winegrowers in Champagne, to the newspaper l'Union.

Just for decoration
In the old days - and I do not know excactly when that happened to be - farmers were allowed to plant an area of 2500 square meters with vines and use the grapes for wine for their own consumption. Those were the days.

Now you can grow one single plant in espalier but only for decoration. I presume it is allowed to eat the grapes though, Even grapes for champagne are quite small, they taste fine. As long as you like their touch of acidity.

We have one small Pinot Noir in our garden. I hope it is included i the rule. Otherwise we must build an espalier fast fast fast, so we do not put the license in any danger.





But now I would like to know if the vines we last May found for sale outside the Chapel Down vinery in Southern England just happen to be another example of the usual British stretching and bending the EU-rules to the limit. Maybe the customers are only allowed one plant.

Or the English winegrowers may just be happily not knowing the degree of details, when it comes to EU-regulations of vines. Because apparently the legislation on these matters is dealt with at Bruxelles-level.

På dansk

Copyright: The copyright for text and photos at bobler.blogspot.com belongs to Solveig Tange. You may use my articles, photos or parts of them for non-commercial use and if I am credited as the author. Feel free to link to this site but not in your own frameset please.

09 October, 2001

Indian Summer in the Montagne de Reims



All the wonderful sunshine, that we receive at the moment, affects the vines as well as humans. These lovely Pinot Noir-grapes will never see green champagnebottles from the inside. The harvest is over. But maybe a thoughtful soul will pass buy to pick them for a clafoutis instead.



The different vines are not the same when it comes to pretty autumn colours by the way. Where the Pinot Noir-grapes really wear the prettiest autumncolours from the entire scale of burned colours, the Chardonnay all too soon moves from green, passes yellow to wither.

På dansk

Copyright: The copyright for text and photos at bobler.blogspot.com belongs to Solveig Tange. You may use my articles, photos or parts of them for non-commercial use and if I am credited as the author. Feel free to link to this site but not in your own frameset please.

08 October, 2001

Marnotherapeutical


Balloons are part of the marnotherapy. Here passing over newly burst Pinot Noir-vines in the Montagne de Reims.

- And they even let people pay 50 euros.

The astonishment is quite genuine, as guests, grapepickers and the family discuss during one of the meals of the past grapeharvest.

The subject is a vigneron in one of the villages of the Côte des Blancs, who has understood how to make a business of winetourism as well. Several days of the grapeharvest this year he welcomed 200 paying guests to a traditional lunch.

On top of the lunch the guests get a bit of an introduction to the work in the fields, a visit to the local museum of champagne and some hours where they pick grapes. This is what you get for 50 euros. Almost.

Local astonishment
This is the part where the genuine surprise enters the scene. The local champenois who have to work in the vineyards to make their living just do not understand, what makes anyone who does not have to even pay to participate.

To pick grapes is hard, dirty, boring (for some). To empty baskets or buckets and lift boxes filled with 50 kilos of grapes is even harder, even more dirty.

But if you are not local - like me - the vines, the grapes, the old-fashioned way of the harvest has a special aura. You are outside all day, you can sniff the smell of wet soils, feel a light wind play on your cheek and feel the beneficial sensation of sunbeams that warm your skin.

Okay, some people will end the grapeharvest with a back burned as red as a lobster. In France there are still a lot of macho men that do not use suntan lotion. Their problem.

So I understand quite well that some hours of harvesting are tempting. It takes you one step closer to the full bottles than what you achieve from a visit at the reception of the vigneron, and it is the only task in the vineyards that you can carry out without knowing anything. But few locals have understood this fascination.

Lifestyle in the Marne
This - and because champagne is good business - is probably why only few vignerons in Champagne so far work with winetourism. But in other big wineareas in France it seems to be a domain that is in growth. Along with the general crisis, I suppose. Certainly it is mentioned more and more in professional media and newsletters.

In Champagne few or none have an economical pressure these days where sales seem to know only one direction: Up. Which is undoubtly why the phenomenon is not very developped here yet. Certainly it is far away from the potential it must have.

The question is how much there will remain to show on the long term, since the development here is moving away from a classical harvest where you lodge people. The authorities demand more and more facilities for the staff - that follows a modern world, of course - but it also makes many decide to hire teams instead that lodge themselves in their own campingcars. Thus you save installing for instance yet another shower. But you also loose the traditions of the grapeharvest one more place.

Folklore for the tourists
Left will be various harvest parties the old style, that areas such as the Saint-Thierry massif arranges, but only after the real grapeharvest is over. Nobody has time to deal with tourists before. So there will be a bit of hullabaloo for the visitors but not the real thing.

In the departement of Marne the initiative marnothérapie covers champagne and vines and much more. For instance the hotel-castle in Etoges, wellness
and a flight over the Montagne de Reims in balloons.

If your preference is more the grapeharvest itself such as in the village in the Côte des Blancs, a bottle of champagne from the year is included in your 50 euros. You may even get an older bottle if you cannot wait two years since any champagne will not be ready until two years after the grapeharvest.

På dansk

Copyright: The copyright for text and photos at bobler.blogspot.com belongs to Solveig Tange. You may use my articles, photos or parts of them for non-commercial use and if I am credited as the author. Feel free to link to this site but not in your own frameset please.

05 October, 2001

Laws of champagne must be followed

Quotas, pruningsystems, different dates of harvesting... the line of laws and rules, that the winegrowers of Champagne must follow to be allowed to write champagne on their etiquettes sometimes seems infinite. And since it is hardly possible for any authority to controle it all, you at times may get the heretic idea that it may all be just for the sake of good looks and high prices. Well, it is not, and we have recently seen good, solid proof.

This concerns an acquaintance that makes his leaving from performing different taskes in vineyards of other people in the Côte des Blancs. He has put himself into trouble after letting different teams pick grapes in the region of Vertus. But at wrong starting times.

Four different starting dates
In Vertus grapeharvest happens to be a rather complicated affair, because the plots are divided into four different zones. This is due to big differences between the plots. Some are placed on slopes around Vertus, others on completely flat land. An orientation that is important for the maturity of the grapes. In Vertus this means four different start dates for the grapeharvest.

From a technical point of view this is of course the best thing to do. The grapes are simply harvested at a better time. But it is also very complicated for an employer who have to plan how he can hire a group of people and get everything harvested in a continuous period of time.

Our acquaintance this year made a crucial mistake. He mixed up the starting dates for these different zones, and thus harvested some grapes at wrong times.

Bureaucrats in farmer's country
A detail so far out in the land of farmers, that the bureaucrats in the INAO - that is the organisation under the Ministry of Agriculture that guards the AOC's - of course would never have hear about it. If not helpful neighbours took care of whispering the news about the mistaken harvest dates into the ears of the right people. Which lead to a bustle of bureaucrats from Paris in the affected rows of vines.

So now we know: It does matter whether you stick to the rules or not. You always run the risk, that somebody would feel like telling somebody else about those who may not do as they are supposed to.

We expect to take over a very mistreated plot this autumn. A plot that will need a lot of manual work, before it can meet the technical requirements. But I suppose we will not be charged with anything as long as we work on the state if it and change it for the better.

The grapes harvested at wrong times were rejected, by the way. So it does matter after all.

På dansk

Copyright: The copyright for text and photos at bobler.blogspot.com belongs to Solveig Tange. You may use my articles, photos or parts of them for non-commercial use and if I am credited as the author. Feel free to link to this site but not in your own frameset please.

01 October, 2001

News October 2006

06.10.2006: From the beginning of November a rosé champagne from the house of Ayala has been for sale. It is called "Rosé Nature", and the "Nature" covers, that it contains absolutely no sugar after degorgement. This latest member of an increasingly popular, pink family mainly contains grapes from the harvest in 2002. It is mixed of 53 percent of Chardonnay from Cuis-Vertus, Pinot Noir from Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Verzy and Rilly-la-Montagne and eight percent redwine from Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, says La Journée Vinicole. The house of Ayala is owned by another famous inhabitant of Aÿ, Bollinger.

17.10.2006:
Bollinger is not pleased. Bottles of Bolly has been put on sale in the sales of wine, that takes place in some French supermarket chains every autumn for a price of 27 euro. Similar bottles normally sell for more than double. The marketing director of Bollinger, Steven Leroux, says to Decanter.com, that the company wants further details about the sale, and that Bollinger considers a court case. According to the top boss, Ghislain de Montgolfier, an offer of this kind is bad for the image of Bollinger.

16.10.2006: Pommery is ready with another member of the young POP-family. A golden 20 centiliter POP in the blue and the pink series is ready for the Christmas-shopping, says Just-drinks.com.

19.10.2006: Remy Cointreau increased their turnover with 1,3 percent in the first six months of 2006, the group says to the British newsagency, Reuters. Demand of the champagne Piper-Heidsieck and of cognac has contributed to the growth.

20.10.2006: The Vranken-Pommery-Monopole group has grown 11,6 percent in the first six months of 2006. The group comprises Vins des Sables and Vins-de-Provence too, but it is mainly the activities in Champagne, that has put the growth of the year as high as 19,9 percent in Europe, 28,8 percent in the Americas and 64,5 percent in Asia, says La Journée Vinicole. The group follows the same trend as the collegues in Reims and Épernay, and has in 2006 introduced a new rosé. It is a millésime from 1999 in the upper end of the Pommery-assortment, the cuvée Louise.

24.10.2006: The purchase of Lanson International in March 2006 has halved the profit of Boizel Chanoine Champagne in the first half of the year, says Just-drinks.com.

På dansk

Copyright: The copyright for text and photos at bobler.blogspot.com belongs to Solveig Tange. You may use my articles, photos or parts of them for non-commercial use and if I am credited as the author. Feel free to link to this site but not in your own frameset please.