Santa, thank you so much for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to talk to Moore Champagne. We have so many questions, but we've managed to pick a few that we've just got to know the answers to – so here goes!

Q. How fast does your sleigh go?

A. Oh that's a good one. Lots of very clever scientists have spent a long time trying to work it out, based on how many houses I have to visit every year in so many countries around the world. It doesn't have a speedometer but I do know that it's faster than the fastest sports car. You just have to believe in a little bit of magic.

Q. Would you ever switch the sleigh to electric power?

A. Never! Reindeer are very environmentally friendly (as long as they don't eat sprouts) and very renewable because when they retire, their children take over. Plus, I don't need to stop every few hundred miles to plug them in – it would make my trips take far too long and I wouldn't want to miss anyone out.

Q. Has everyone made the nice list this year?

A. As everyone's worked so hard to keep each other safe this year, I think almost everyone will be on the nice list. There's still a few days left yet so I need everyone to keep being good please!

Q. What is the strangest gift you've ever delivered?

A. I once helped deliver a new baby early one Christmas morning, does that count?

Q. Tea or coffee?

Neither I'm afraid. I only drink Champagne and sherry. Not together of course! Sherry to keep me warm and Champagne to celebrate when my night's work is done.

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Thanks Father Christmas for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us.

Good luck this year!

We were lucky enough to be able to take a spin through Champagne towards the end of the summer to catch up with some of our suppliers.

Maude’s team were starting to gather the harvest while we were there. Harvesting was unusually early this year due to the hot summer.

What's more, The Comité Champagne – the body that regulates yields of the region – set a low cap on the amount of grapes that can be turned into wine for making Champagne in 2020.

Meaning only 8,000 kg of grapes per hectare were permitted. Sadly, there was a lot of fruit left in the fields to rot.

If your French is up to it there is a Youtube video made by Les Vignerons de Champagne La Course des Bulles (The Bubble race) which I recommend watching.

Now we are not going to see any of this year’s harvest for at least two years – and for the reserve it will be four or five. Perhaps it is best for 2020 to be bottled and squirrelled away until it has improved a little.

Here's to 2021. Cheers!

The Comite de Champagne is the trade organisation established by statute to manage the common interests of growers (‘vignerons’) and Champagne Houses (négociants/producteurs’).

This year it the Comite has decided to limit the harvest to 8,000 kgs per hectare. 

When discussing this with Maude Plener a week ago I was horrified to learn that this would mean that she would be leaving about 2,000 kgs per hectare to rot into the ground. Surely I said you can sell the excess, outside of Champagne. You could make grape juice with it. You could make still white wine with it. 

No she was adamant that the rules of the CIVC had to be obeyed and she would select the best of the crop and throw the rest away.

The reason for the apparently appalling decision is due to the fact that 20 million fewer bottles of champagne have been consumed this year. With no weddings, parties nor receptions due to Coronavirus, demand for champagne has nosedived. Furthermore the government's ever promising desire for England to stand alone once again and call it Brexit has curtailed UK sales. A 20% import tariff in the US on the 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' has seen demand fall there also. This year the limit has nothing to do with the abundance or shortfall of the crop and  a lot to do with a surfeit of champagne, how much can be stored away in the cellars and preventative measure to prevent its image being tarnished by some dumping of excess stock. 

Champagne is not a new industry. It is not an industry that relies upon fast turn round, carefully computed stock holding, or just in time deliveries. The world really has become a sadder place if there are to be no more parties, receptions or events needing to be marked by the consumption of the worlds favourite drink. 

It has survived two world wars, phyloxera, the rise of prosecco and the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.

This will probably hopefully turn out to be another minor bump in the road. 

Maud Plener has once again put her head above the parapet and enjoyed the plaudits and praise of several oenological experts. Pierre Casamayor, author of ‘How to taste wine’, made the following comments about Plener Rose –

‘Robe pétale de rose. Un nez de fraise, pomelo, avec des notes florales, de fruits exotiques. Bouche fruitée, sur la fraise, avec du tonus, un bon équilibre et une finale très fruitée, vive et enlevée. Pour un saumon grillé béarnaise. ‘

Which means roughly

Colour - rose petal. The nose is of strawberry and pomelo, with floral notes and exotic fruits. On the palate it is well balanced strawberry fruit. The finish is fruity, lively and sustained. Good with a grilled salmon béarnaise.

The Decanter World Wine Awards 2017 awarded her Champagne Brut Grand Cru  a Seal of Approval and it won 85 points.

The Aube - An area within Champagne

To the majority the term  ‘AOC Champagne’ means the Montagne de Rheims, Epernay, l’Avenue de Champagne’,  the river Marne, the Cote des Blancs with its string of quiet ‘Villages Fleuries’. Consequently it comes as a surprise to learn that there is an area called the Cotes des Bar some 100 km to the south of Rheims which is just as much as a part of the champagne region as its renowned northern colleagues.

Currently Moore Champagne has three suppliers all from the traditional champagne region: one in Bouzy, one in Le Mesnil sur-Oger and one in Oger. Following a major tasting event in London in the winter I decided to include The Aube within the itinerary for a visit to our suppliers with a view to finding a hidden gem.  Traditionally if Les Grandes Maisons and Les Grandes Marques looked down their nezs at the growing band of small growers in main stream Champagne then L’Aube was simply beyond the Pale. One Negociant was recorded as saying ‘Oh do they make champagne down there?’ Indeed for many years the Cote des Bar simply grew and sold grapes almost as a commodity for use by the Negociants. The proposed exclusion of the Cote des Bar from the champagne appellation in 1910 was one of the flash points for riots and civil disorder in 1911. Even when the Echelle des Crus (the ladder of quality was established in 1927, by which villages were denominated as Grand Cru, Premier Cru or just plain Cru, none of the villages in the Aube region were included as Premier or Grand Cru.

In recent years artisanal entrepreneurial vignerons  in the Cote des Bars have kicked against the traces and are making outstanding champagnes under their own names. On the basis of a positive review in the Times my wife and stayed at a small hotel in Essoyes. This is a sleepy village which would have remained well off the tourist path were it not for the fact that Renoir lived, loved and languished there. Now the refurbishment of his house is complete and the village square is dominated by a very attractive museum, it is on its way to becoming a Mecca for Renoir groupies. A brand new tasting room has opened opposite the museum it will not be long before more open once the Renoiristas arrive.

It is an utterly charming area. At 100 km south of Rheims it is warmer. The countryside consists of small rounded hills with rivers and streams at the bottom. The soil is rich and less calcareous than its northern counterpart and the vineyards are on the southern facing slopes leaving the bottom of the valley to arable cultivation. It is worth noting that this area is less than 80 km from Chablis. During a pair of days in this area we enjoyed several delightful champagnes. Viticulturally the Pinot Noir grape is predominant with occasional flurries of Chardonnay and the same can be said to describe the elaboration of the wines. Regrettably having hoisted our colours as an importer of Grand Cru Grower champagnes however attractive it might be to champion the cause of the Vignerons of the Cote des Bar and despite the evident attraction of their wines, it would be contradictory to introduce one as a supplier. Nevertheless if you are contemplating a trip it really is a delight to explore the area and its wines away from the hoopla of the main more traditional well-trod paths.

Eventually about this time of year an event called ‘veraison’ (the onset of ripening) takes place. Basically the fruit stops growing in size and its colour starts to change. At this point the level of acidity starts to diminish and hexose sugars start to accumulate. Whether it is strawberries or blackcurrants anybody who has tried to eat unripe fruit knows that it is tart (from the tartaric acid) and you need to wait till the sugars arrive.

Veraison is a good indication of when the harvest (vendange) will take place. In Maude Plener’s estimation it could be early in September. It should be noted that the official harvest dates are not decided by individual grower but by the Comite Champagne (CIVC) who using the results of regular samples from 420 different plots decide the optimum moment for the correct balance of grape ripeness, potential alcohol levels and natural acidity 

The harvest in the Champagne Region began on 15 September this year. It was a challenging year. In late April, frosts hit almost a quarter of the Champagne appellation

area and the buds were completely destroyed across 14% of the vineyards.Throughout the spring rain, hail showers and storms were of biblical proportions and in some areas rainfall was to two to three times higher than the average recorded for the past 20 years. There then

followed a period of intense heat and some of the south facing areas suffered scalding of the fruit. All of this means fruit yields will be markedly lower. Shortfalls in volume will be made up by using vin clair from previous years. Perversely the wines could be more powerful and age better.

 In Bouzy, in the third week of September the Plener family started with their crop of Bouzy Rouge vines and then moved on to their parcels of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

Jean Francois is pleased with the Chardonnay grapes and is seen here (above) accompanying them on the way to the pressoir. His daughter Maud is in the centre of the picture to the left. She runs the team of 30 pickers whose services have been used for the last thirty years.

At the invitation of G & T weekends, William and Lydia spent a day or two checking out the Loire Valley before heading off to Poitiers to run a champagne tasting in a chateau.  It might seem to be a case of taking coals to Newcastle doing this sort of thing in France but the offer to showcase our grower champagnes to the clients of gandtweekends was simply too good an entrée to miss. G&T Weekends always ensure that the Saturday night is fast, frantic and full, so the chance to reinvigorate the guests’ spirits on a calm Sunday afternoon with several glasses of intriguing champagne was a brilliant plan. The setting was outstandingly impressive and simply spectacular. A fairy tale chateau basking in the early Spring sunshine. The interior rooms were grand and gracious.

The guests embraced the gallic spirit of the afternoon by dressing up in classic French costumes. Marie Antoinnette, Porthous, Athos and Aramis along with the barmaid from ‘Allo Allo’ were all there.  

We are well versed at explaining why and how grower champagnes are in fact as good as, if not better and are almost certainly cheaper than the mainstream big names from the industry. We captured the audience with a precis of the fundamentals of champagne production that are behind the unique taste of our products. There is a balance to be struck with any audience. You need to be able to explain how grower champagnes are unique to a patch of land without without being nerdy. You need to be able to describe the David and Goliath scenario of Grower vs  Les Grandes Maisons without sounding like a proselytising anti-globalisation activist. The great advantage is that although you may have a room of people new to the idea of grower champagne to start with by the time they are are on their third or fourth glass they are won over the the distinctive and interesting flavours and aromas on offer.

All went well and there at least twenty or so converts to the cause of championing small family enterprises with a history of making outstanding products from their own land. We hope to work with G & T weekends again in the future.