Adapting champagne production practices to preserve quality

How is glob­al warm­ing affect­ing Cham­pagne vineyards? 

Vin­cent Mal­herbe. Con­di­tions increas­ingly resemble those of south­ern regions, which has led us to begin har­vest in August three times over the past ten years. Springs used to be cold and humid but they are now hot­ter and drier. Before, vines reached matur­ity at the end of Septem­ber, or even the begin­ning of Octo­ber, when it was approx­im­ately 4°C in the morn­ing and 14°C in the after­noon. Now, tem­per­at­ures can reach 25°C dur­ing the har­vest season.

How does this impact quality?

VM. Grape matur­ity is bet­ter so for now it is bene­fi­cial, but this could evolve if the cli­mate con­tin­ues to change. In the past, we har­ves­ted in Octo­ber to reach the neces­sary ripe­ness of the grapes and we could exper­i­ence two prob­lems: an excess of acid­ity and a risk of dis­eases related to humid­ity. Nowadays, we are faced with new issues: the alco­hol level has increased while the acid­ity level decreased. We must remain vigil­ant because it is a key ele­ment for both the con­tent and age­ing of cham­pagnes. Based on rolling aver­age over four years, the degree of alco­hol has increased from 9.6°C in 2007 to 10.1°C in 2020. In the 1980s, we often har­ves­ted when tem­per­at­ures ranged from 7.5°C to 8°C.

Marc Bré­vot. Cli­mate change has an addi­tion­al impact on the entire eco­sys­tem sur­round­ing vine­yards. For example, we are see­ing modi­fic­a­tions in the micro­bi­ota of grapes which can bring out unknown aromas. Some years, we also observe a desyn­chron­isa­tion of verais­on (the change in col­our of grapes), due to an accu­mu­la­tion of sug­ar before the grapes reach phen­olic and aro­mat­ic matur­ity. Also, by com­par­ing com­pos­i­tion­al ana­lyses of cur­rent grape musts with those of the 80s from the same land plots, we find that the nitro­gen con­tent has changed, too; it has decreased over time and as such the amino acid com­pos­i­tion is less appro­pri­ate for vini­fic­a­tion. That means we have to be more pre­cise in the way we devel­op our wines to main­tain the desired sens­ory characteristics. 

To that end, we developed a meth­od for mon­it­or­ing fer­ment­a­tion in real-time at our R&D unit, which we have now imple­men­ted at our wine­mak­ing site of Moët & Chan­don de Mon­tai­gu. We are also test­ing new tech­no­lo­gies for the future. We tested cool­ing boxes under vacu­um to quickly and effi­ciently get the ideal tem­per­at­ures of grapes for vini­fic­a­tion. We tried image ana­lys­is tech­niques using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to char­ac­ter­ise the stage of grape matur­ity, in the vine­yard or after their har­vest, to obtain raw mater­i­al that con­forms with our qual­ity stand­ards. We are also con­duct­ing research to bet­ter under­stand the micro­bi­ota and its influ­ence on the qual­ity of our products, include new early indic­at­ors of sens­it­iv­ity to dis­eases to assist busi­ness users in their decision-mak­ing (ex: indic­at­ors of fra­gil­ity of grape skin), or identi­fy future vari­et­ies of vines with great poten­tial in the new cli­mate conditions.

What can be done to counter the effects of cli­mate change?

VM. Vine­yard prac­tises are chan­ging, trim­ming espe­cially. We use root­stocks from oth­er regions, for example. But the spe­cific­a­tions of the INAO [the French reg­u­lat­ory body for pro­tec­ted geo­graph­ic­al indic­a­tions], are very strict. And, yet we can­not sta­bil­ise our recipes while our envir­on­ment is chan­ging. So, we are demand­ing a right to exper­i­ment both from an eco­lo­gic­al and agro­nom­ic­al point of view without the risk down­grad­ing our products. The Ger­man, Swiss and Itali­an qual­ity stand­ards are more flex­ible than the French. 

Present-day tra­di­tions are not sus­tain­able in the long term, and it would be unwise to let them reach break­ing point. We must pro­gress in order to main­tain style and the qual­ity of our wines. Half a cen­tury ago, Chardon­nay did not exist in the Cham­pagne region. Our ancest­ors were able to change. In the future, we will need grape vari­et­ies with a later growth cycle, because there is a cor­rel­a­tion between the matur­ity and devel­op­ment of the fruit.

MB. There is con­sid­er­able pres­sure to devel­op agri­cul­tur­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity on one hand, and the oblig­a­tion to adapt to the chan­ging cli­mate on the oth­er hand. Con­tinu­ous optim­isa­tion is an out­dated post-war agri­cul­tur­al mod­el. We must devel­op sys­tem­ic approaches, not ana­lyt­ic ones. In this regard, agroe­co­logy is a very excit­ing lead. It pilots a com­plex eco­sys­tem in which the vine is not isol­ated any­more, but fully integ­rated in the sur­round­ing envir­on­ment and biod­iversity, and adap­ted to the loc­al climate.

What does the future hold for the Cham­pagne vine­yards? Are you inter­ested by new wine-grow­ing regions like those in the South of England?

VM. Bear­ing in mind what we just dis­cussed, vine­yards in the Cham­pagne region have a bright and sunny future ahead of them – provided that we are giv­en the means to reas­on­ably improve our cul­tiv­a­tion tech­niques. The solu­tion lies in innov­at­ing in accord­ance with our tra­di­tions. We have much to do on the 1,200 acres in Cham­pagne. An expan­sion in the South of Eng­land is not in our agenda, even if we closely fol­low the evol­u­tion of wine-mak­ing prac­tices and tech­niques in the UK.