Burgundy and Champagne Lead by Example

It is rare to meet an enophile who isn't also a Francophile. If you are a wine enthusiast, chances are you are also a France enthusiast, and if you are at all passionate about France, you are no doubt aware that the country is in a deep rut, with a sclerotic economy and a dysfunctional political system. Sure, France still retains an incomparable charm, but it is a country fearful of the future and determined to maintain the status quo, and this has proven to be a recipe for stagnation and decline. 

Amid all the dispiriting news about unemployment, social tensions, political instability, and so forth, the French wine sector seems almost as a relic of a bygone France – a last repository of French savoir-faire and excellence. But two of France's marquee wine regions, Champagne and Burgundy, are booming amid the country's deep malaise, and they are flourishing for reasons that might serve as a lesson for the rest of France.

To be sure, Champagne and Burgundy are exceptions; much of viticultural France is struggling in tandem with the rest of the country. Languedoc, Beaujolais, and a broad swath of Bordeaux, for instance, have been mired in economic crisis for years.

The proximate cause of the downturn, which has threatened to put thousands of winegrowers out of business, has been plummeting domestic wine consumption, heightened competition from abroad and being too slow to adapt to changing circumstances.

At the same time, the AOC system has become as much of an albatross to vintners as government bureaucrats are to French businesses. With its tendency to reward mediocrity, and the numerous instances in which excellent producers have run afoul of the AOC mechanism for one (invariably unpersuasive) reason or another, the appellation system these days is just another emblem of French dysfunction.

The Champenois turn convention around

But then there's the Champagne region, which, amid this general torpor in France, has become arguably the most dynamic wine-producing area in the world. The so-called grower Champagne movement has not only challenged the established hierarchy in Champagne, as represented by the grandes marques; it has gone a long way to changing our conception of Champagne. Thanks to producers like Selosse, Pierre Peters, and Gimonnet, many consumers have come to realize that Champagne can be as much a vin de terroir as any red or white Burgundy and that – as in Burgundy – there are important differences between villages and individual vineyards that are worthy of exploration.

Rather than shrinking in the face of competition from the growers, some of the big houses have responded by coming out with new single-vineyard and single-variety wines of their own. Champagne is being reinvented before our eyes; it is still the same singularly pleasurable sparkling wine but, in embracing change and a spirit of innovation, the Champenois have brought new vitality to an old region, while also raising the quality of their wines.

A similar thing has played out in Burgundy. Historically, Burgundy was an insular farm community – the antithesis of cosmopolitan, outward-looking Bordeaux. And 40 years ago, Burgundy was a pretty stagnant region. There were certainly good wines, but Burgundy was underachieving relative to the quality of its vineyards. There was little innovation and little motivation to change and improve. The specter of competition changed that. The so-called Judgment of Paris, in which a California Chardonnay bested some illustrious white Burgundies in 1976, helped shake Burgundy out of its complacency. At Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, for instance, Aubert de Villaine (who was one of the tasters in the Judgment of Paris) and his then co-director Lalou Bize-Leroy instituted much more rigorous farming and selection – DRC was the first domaine in Burgundy to use a sorting table. Some producers sent their sons and daughters to do apprenticeships in the United States, Australia, and other countries; the kids returned home with new insights into viticulture and vinification that helped improve the quality of their families' wines.

Nearly 40 years after the Judgment of Paris, Burgundy is prospering as never before. The wines are better than ever; indeed, Burgundy has eclipsed Bordeaux as the touchstone for many enophiles. In the face of unexpected competition, the Burgundians could have resisted change and stubbornly clung to the status quo. Instead, they embraced the challenge posed by the rising quality in California, Oregon and elsewhere. They used it as motivation to improve their own wines, and have achieved a degree of excellence and consistency that their fathers and grandfathers could never have imagined. They did all this while remaining utterly faithful to Burgundy's heritage – to a belief in the sanctity of terroir and to this notion that wine should convey a sense of place (a fealty that, among other things, led them to reject the lure of Parkerization).

During this same period, the Burgundians have also demonstrated a keen entrepreneurial spirit. In the late 1980s, Maison Joseph Drouhin established a winery in Oregon, and last year, Louis Jadot purchased a vineyard there, as well. Closer to home, Dominique Lafon, the great Meursault producer, branched out to the Mâconnais in the late 1990s, and Anne-Claude Leflaive of Domaine Leflaive followed suit. These moves were prompted by a desire to try something new, but both Lafon and Leflaive were also making a virtue of necessity: with land on the Cote d'Or so difficult to come by these days, Burgundy winemakers need to look further afield for new opportunities. More recently, Guillaume d'Angerville, proprietor of the eponymous Volnay domaine, moved into the Jura and is putting out wines under the Domaine du Pélican label.

As with the Champenois, the Burgundians have shown that embracing change doesn't require casting aside one's identity or traditions – that a spirit of progress and a willingness to innovate can be the best means of preserving a way of life. The rest of France should take note.

Mike Steinberger wrote a book five years ago called Au Revoir to All That, about the decline of French cuisine set against the backdrop of France’s diminished fortunes generally.