The French wine-growing region of Champagne gave the most famous sparkling wine in the world the legally protected name Champagne. It is not identical with the administrative region Champagne-Ardenne or the historical landscape Champagne. The heart of the area is Reims, where almost all French rulers were crowned in Notre-Dame Cathedral, but the towns of Epernay and Chalons-sur-Marne are also very important. Champagne is the northernmost wine-growing region of France in the Paris Basin, about 140 kilometres east of Paris. The "Région délimitée de la Champagne viticole" was first defined in 1908, the boundaries then changed in 1911 and finally finalised in 1927. The region consists of 20 areas, each with a fairly homogeneous terroir. These are divided into six regions: Côte de Champagne, Côte des Blancs, Côte des Bar, Montagne de Reims, Petit Morin et Grand Morin and Vallée de la Marne:
Vineyards & Grape Varieties
The vineyards cover a total of 34,000 hectares, mostly in the three departments of Aisne, Aube and Marne, as well as smaller areas in Haute-Marne and Seine-et-Marne. Within the huge area are the two small appellations Coteaux Champenois for non-sparkling still wines and Rosé des Riceys for the famous rosé wine. The approved three main varieties for Champagne are Pinot Noir (38%), Pinot Meunier (33%) and Chardonnay (28%), which occupy 99% of the vineyards. The four varieties Arbane, Petit Meslier, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc are also permitted for historical reasons, but with only 90 hectares of vineyards they are of almost no importance in terms of quantity.
Échelle des crus
With the Échelle des cr us classification system introduced in 1920,...
