Bursting Bubbles A Secret History of Champagne and the Rise of the Great Growers

The rise and rise of a group of artisanal producers in Champagne over the last 20 years has challenged everything we thought we knew about this famous region. In Bursting Bubbles, Robert Walters takes us on a journey to visit these great growers. Along the way, he reveals a secret history of Champagne and dispels many of the myths that still persist about this celebrated wine style. Controversial and ground breaking, Bursting Bubbles will change the way you think about Champagne.

Robert Walters is a respected wine merchant, vineyard owner, and writer with more than 25 years of experience in the trade. His deep knowledge of the Champagne region comes from working with some of the pre-eminent growers of Champagne from Europe, Australia, and New Zealand for close to 15 years, giving him a unique perspective.

CONTENTS
Disclaimers Where the author preempts several lines of criticism, comes clean about his motivations and forewarns the reader that he is not without self-interest 10

Prologue In which a wine traveller has an encounter with a Champagne from another planet and lets the reader in on a little secret 13

Part I Where we follow sparkling Champagne’s remarkable metamorphosis from faulty to fabulous 21

Myth I In the name of the father: Dom Pérignon was the father of Champagne 30

Part II In which we drive along a haunted racetrack in search of a singular grower and discover, not for the last time, that all is not what it seems in the world of Champagne 33

Part III Where we meet the revolutionary parents of modern Champagne – science and industry 47

Myth II First place: Champagne was the original sparkling wine 52

Part IV In which the author travels to the mountain to meet the rock of Ambonnay, tries to get blood from a stone and ends up leaving on better terms than when he arrived 55

Myth III The good and the great: Grand cru vineyards produce the best wines 68

Part V Where we head to ‘Rahnse’ to visit the cathedral and then travel south to Épernay, for a stroll down the legendary Avenue de Disney 69

Myth IV Silver spoon: Placing a spoon in the top of a Champagne bottle helps preserve the bubbles for longer 77

Part VI In which the wine traveller drives south from Épernay to Avize and discovers that all that glitters is not gold 79

Part VII Where we encounter more threats to Champagne’s ‘Great Wine’ pretensions and find out what conventional Champagne has in common with baked bread, roasted nuts and seared steak 91

Myth V Holy Trilogy: Only three grape varieties are used to make Champagne 98

Part VIII In which we pay a visit to Pascal Agrapart, and where the authoracknowledges that he can sometimes miss what is right under his  nose by playing the man and not the ball 101

Part IX Where we unearth even more image problems for Champagne (by comparing the ‘approach Champenois’ with best practice in Burgundy) and where we also learn that the English are the necrophiliacs of the wine world 113

Myth VI Blending is better: Champagne is blended in order to produce a better balanced, better quality wine 119

Part X In which the author tries to comprehend Anselme Selosse via a blend of pop psychology and historical minutiae and then plays word games with the man himself 123

Part XI Where we blend a few things together in order to produce a histoire vraie of Champagne and then explore the extent to which brand has come to dominate land in this famous region 135

Myth VII Simple fizzics: Where bubbles come from 143

Part XII In which we head south to Vertus and visit a great grower making ‘crazy wine’ in order to remind ourselves, once again, that Champagne is a wine, first and foremost 145

Part XIII The continuation of our histoire vraie, where the author views advanced capitalism through the rosiest of glasses and perhaps takes the friendship too far by comparing the history of Champagne to that of Camembert and free-range chicken 159

Myth VIII The shape of things to come: Champagne should be served in ?utes 163

Part XIV In which we travel from Vertus to the historic market city of Troyes, all the while grappling with the ideologies of Champagne’s separatists 165

Part XV Where the author discusses the problems with the term ‘grower revolution’ and then offers the reader a choice between two radically different worlds of Champagne 171

Part XVI In which we visit our first Aube grower and learn what it means to be an outsider in your own wine region 179

Part XVII The final instalment of our histoire vraie, where the true grower revolutions are revealed – and yes, there were more than one 191

Myth IX In the beginning: Champagne is mentioned in the Bible 195

Part XVIII In which we visit a vigneron farmer – or is that a farmer vigneron? 197

Part XIX Where we delve into the remaining key factors that led to the development of Champagne’s current batch of great grower-producers 207

Myth X Bursting bubbles: Smaller bubbles are a sign of a high-quality Champagne 212

Part XX In which we visit the last of our growers in the Aube and learn that, no matter how seriously we take it, wine’s main work is to make us happy 215

Epilogue A short manifesto in which the author asks you, the wine lover, a simple, somewhat rhetorical question: ‘What sort of Champagne do you really want to drink?’ 223

Notes 229
Acknowledgements 237
Bibliography 238
Index 23