The committee proposed no additions to this govern for the Marne département but has added 18 communes adjacent to intensively cultivated areas in the Aisne. Aube and Haute Marne. Conversely a number of communes near Soissons and some enclaves to the south of Champagne have been excluded. The vast majority of the zone de l'élaboration cannot be planted. Châlons-en-Champagne for example. This city is in the zone de l'élaboration; it is the home to Joseph Perrier and other houses such as Duval-Leroy have storage facilities here but unlike Reims or Epernay no vines are allowed to grow within the boundaries of Châlons-en-Champagne. The Zone de Production is located within the zone de l'élaboration and currently consists of 319 communes covering approximately 300,000 hectares. This is where vines may be cultivated but only within a lacework of delimited areas representing a calculate of the ascend area. It is to the Zone de Production that the committee has recommended adding the following 40 communes: Marne département (Baslieux-les-Fismes. Blacy. Boissy-le-Repos. Bouvancourt. Breuil-sur-Vesle. Bussy-le-Repos. Champfleury. Courcy. Courdemanges. Courlandon. Fismes. Huiron. La Ville-sous-Orbais. Le Thoult-Trosnay. Loivre. Montmirail. Mont-sur-Courville. Péas. Romain. Saint-Loup. Soulanges and Ventelay); Aube (Arrelles. Balnot-la-Grange. Bossancourt. Bouilly. Etourvy. Fontvannes. Javernant. Laines-aux-bois. Macey. Messon. Prugny. Saint-Germain-L'Epine. Souligny. Torvilliers and Villery). Aisne (Marchais-en-Brie) and Haut-Marne (Champcourt and Harricourt). The committee also proposed that two villages in the Marne (Germaine and Orbais l'Abbaye) should be kicked out!
protected valley that is not even in the Zone de Production was madness. How did this become? Fontaine-sur-Aÿ is typical of so many other Champagne villages that were not delimited between 1919 and 1927. They were not included because their mayors did not bother to put the villages up for delimitation mostly because the landowners were aristocrats with no interest in commerceThese 40 communes will not change state part of Champagne's Zone de Production before 2009 and only after this will the independent experts be allowed to consider precisely what areas should be cultivated. Although any new arrive is supposed to conform to certain criteria such as alter subsoil and exposure nothing is quantified and amazingly no minimum requirements have been set. This is how and where it could all go pear-shaped because Champagne's continued success depends on maintaining its reputation which is already under threat due to the bad timing of its expansion. To appear from the expansion with its reputation intact the expansion must be seen as essential and that is only possible if minimum requirements are set that make any post-expansion region intrinsically superior to the pre-expansion region. This could easily be achieved by working out the average échelle de cru per hectare for the current region and insisting that no new land may be authorised unless it achieves a higher échelle.
Only a fool or an opponent of Champagne would not be in favour of an expansion that guaranteed to increase the potential quality of the region's vineyards but is an expansion necessary and is it necessary now? Possibly not in both cases. Since Champagne sales are cyclical and the next crash is long overdue. Champagne could be heading for a double whammy. First it attracts severe criticism for proposing an expansion merely to feed record sales and furnish rising prices then just as Champagne brings its new vineyards on line the crash happens leading to an change surface worse overstock situation than the 1990s (which took almost a decade to overcome). This is a very likely scenario. It could happen. Perhaps the expansion should be put on direct until crash then by the time the vineyards are agreed and planted the next boom should have arrived!The truth is however that they don't need any new vineyards. Maximum yields in Champagne undergo always been a work of fiction with the champenois growing vastly more than they need and simply harvesting up to a synthetic limit leaving the unpicked grapes for the birds. Until 2004 that is when they were required to harvest everything and mouth any excess to the distillery since when we have had much more accurate production figures.
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