Wine Regions

France

Champagne

France’s Champagne region produces the world’s finest Sparkling wines. Its cool climate has a mean annual temperature of 10 °C. The soil of Champagne is limey/chalky, which are the product of many years of shell deposits that amassed on the bottom of the sea when France was submerged. These were pressed together and formed a thick layer of chalk.

The vines are planted on the slopes of the hills, which have a thin layer of clay subsoil below the chalk. Slopes with southern and easterly aspects make the best vineyard sites as they benefit the most from the sun.

Champagne’s cool climate and chalky soils ensure the wines have high levels of acidity, which is ideal for Sparkling wines. The Champagne houses have carved chalk underground to store their wines while they undergo their secondary fermentation, which give the wine its complex secondary characters. (LINK TO SPARKLING WINE VARIETIES)

Best performing varietals: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier.

Leading Champagne Houses: Bollinger, Devaux, Louis Roederer, Gosset, Krug, Moet & Chandon, Pol Roger and Taittinger.

The Champagne region is large in size; the region’s main town Rheims is 140km from Paris.

www.champagne-cic.com.au