The Champagne wine region of France is not the largest wine producing area in the country, but certainly produces what most people agree are the best wines in the world.
The Champagne region of France is the world's most famous wine growing region, or at least the region which produces the world's most famous wine.
Lying some one hundred miles to the north-east of Paris, the Champagne region's 75,000 acres of vineyards are in fact divided into three main wine growing areas; the Côte des Blancs, the Vallée de la Marne and Montagne de Reims.
The largest of these three areas, the Vallée de la Marne, is a predominantly chalky area with a thin layer of topsoil which provides perfect drainage for the vines and also an excellent base which reflects the heat of the sun to help ripen the grapes. The finest vineyards in this region are also situated on ground which is high enough to escape the frost of the winter months and low enough to be sheltered from the searing heat of the summer.
The Montagne de Reims, which lies on a forested plateau south of Reims, is also an excellent area for growing vines with a deep layer of crustaceous chalk under a thin layer of topsoil which provides perfect conditions for growing grapes. This area boasts several Grand and Premier Cru wines.
The Côte des Blancs lies on a ridge to the south of Epernay where the chalk subsoil is excellent for producing Chardonnay of the highest quality.
Mention should also be made here to the newest of the Champagne region's wine growing areas, the Côte de Sézanne, which has only been producing wine since the 1960s but which is proving a considerable addition to the region and yielding a very high quality Chardonnay.
Finally, attention must be drawn to one of the northernmost areas, that of Montagne, which enjoys an almost unique micro-climate and producing some of the best Champagne in the world.
One very important thing to remember about Champagne is that it is not a wine in itself, but a blend of several different wines. Accordingly, the great wine houses of Champagne hold many millions of gallons of wine from various different vineyards throughout the Champagne region which are then blended to produce the finished product.
It is thus the blender's art which produces the truly great Champagnes and the manner in which blending is carried out remains a closely guarded secret known only to those working in the great Champagne chateaux.
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