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Champagne’s organic growers undeterred despite difficult vintage
Last year’s wet growing conditions in Champagne affected everyone, but the real test came for organic growers, who – without the aid of systemic fungicides – saw their crop decimated. Nevertheless, they remain undeterred in pursuing their farming philosophy.
That was the message following conversations with a few of Champagne’s biggest organic grape growers, who saw, in some vineyards, their production from the 2024 harvest wiped out completely – costing them huge sums.
Whatever your approach to managing vines in Champagne, particularly badly hit was the Côte des Bars in the southerly Aube department, where some vignerons harvested nothing, others, if they were lucky, around 3-4,000kg/ha – a significant shortfall on the 10,000kg/ha limit set for 2024 by the controlling organisation, Comité Champagne.
Speaking last month to db about the conditions, Michel Drappier, who is head of Aube-based grower and maison Champagne Drappier, said that last year’s conditions were unprecedented.
“We are certified organic, so it is a nightmare to fight against mildew,” he said of the fungus that spread through his vineyards following wet summertime conditions.
“It is the worst crop of my working life, and it was my 50th harvest – my first, as a picker in my teenaged years, was 1974, and that was not a good year, but this was worse,” he recalled.
In Urville, where Drappier is based, the average yield was 2-3000kg/ha he said, “but in some parts, we had almost zero”, he recorded, commenting that his pickers had scoured the vineyards, even if “there was just one grape in a row.”
Summing up the impact in monetary terms, he stated: “It has cost us a fortune.”
So why was it so bad? Just as the vines were budding in the spring, the Aube area of Champagne was hit by icy conditions, due to a mass of freezing air from eastern Europe, which Drappier dubbed “the Moscow-Paris”, and this damaged as much as 60% of the new buds in his vineyards (and surrounding areas).
Although the vine is able to produce shoots from secondary buds, these tend to be more fragile, with narrower sap canals, making them more susceptible to fungal attacks, according to Drappier.
And that meant, when mildew spread across the region following an unusually wet summer, the vines were less resistant to the fungal infection.
But the bad experience of last year’s harvest has not put him off organics, an approach he has long practiced on his estate – indeed, he is moving further towards non-interventionist vine management techniques, such as regenerative practices, which are beginning at Drappier, spearheaded by Michel’s son Hugo.
As for the “small crop” harvested last year by the property, “the grapes we have are fantastic quality, with no botrytis, and the wines we are tasting are really good,” he said, “And better than 2023” – a year that was contrasting in quantity: it produced the heaviest bunches ever picked in Champagne.
Don’t ditch organics
Elsewhere, at Champagne Telmont, which is based in Damery, not far from Epernay in the Marne Valley, “2024 was difficult”, according to cellar master Bertrand Lhôpital, who told db that more than 70% of the producer’s vineyards are farmed organically.
“We lost between 50-70% of grapes due to mildew,” he said, which will probably mean that the house won’t make any vintage Champagnes from the 2024 harvest, using all its crop to make non-vintage expressions – which blend in wines from preceding years.
The maximum yield recorded by an organic grape grower in Champagne last year was 7-8,000kg/ha according to Lhôpital, although “some lost 100%” he said, referring to producers in the Côte des Bar.
While he admitted that he has heard murmurings about ditching organics among some organic growers, he said that his advice would be not to take the decision too quickly.
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“Organics is a commitment, and needs resilience and a lot of energy – it’s a huge decision to go back,” he said.
Looking to the recent past, he said that he had feared some organic growers might go back to conventional practices after the difficult 2021 harvest in Champagne, when some producers lost almost all their crop to mildew. However, he said, “they kept going” with the farming philosophy, which sees vignerons eschew any systemic fungicides.
With 2021 and 2024 both seeing widespread mildew infections for producers in Champagne, Lhôpital believes there may be “a small reduction in organic grape growers” this year, “but not too much”.
He explained, “Our [organic] growers are now thinking of next harvest, they are in another mood, and they are confident at this stage: we are learning every year, and every year we have to adapt, but you need to take in the fact that we could have a bad harvest every four years.”
Indeed, Lhôpital would like to see a little more flexibility in the rules for certified organic grape growers, allowing, for instance, an increase in the level of copper applications – which are used to treat mildew – when the fungal infection is “exceptional”.
“People say that copper is damaging to the soil, but that is not true at the levels it is used today, which are ten times less than 40 years ago, when it might have been 40kg/ha, now it is [capped at] 4kg/ha – but in a year like 2024, perhaps it could have been 5kg/ha to help protect the harvest; we have to adapt the rules of organics,” he said.
Fantastic wines from organic vines
Meanwhile, at Champagne Bollinger – which is based in Aÿ, on the edge of the Montagne de Reims – yields were also down markedly from last year’s harvest due to the combination of weather conditions and organic farming.
“The 2024 harvest was tough, we had so much rain, and the team had to work two times as hard to get two times fewer grapes than the year before,” Bollinger MD Charles-Armand de Belenet told db.
Having “implemented organic farming on all our vineyards”, which amounts to certification on 110 hectares, De Belenet said that he was looking at around a 50% reduction in yields compared to the Comite’s limit of 10,000kg/ha.
Should those vines still be managed “conventionally”, he said that the crop losses in 2024 might be around 20%, “depending on soil type and exposure”.
Aside from the benefits to soil life from practising organics in the vineyard, the lower yields of 2024 brought about another positive – grape quality.
“The quantity is down, but the quality is very promising,” he said, adding that the reduction in crop brought about a desirable concentration of flavours in the berries picked, which were clean and balanced, following dry, sunny conditions during harvesting, with cool nights.
Furthermore, the wines that were being tasted for the first time last month are “fantastic”, he recorded, especially those based on Pinot Noir, with De Belenet forecasting the production of high-end vintage expressions from the house based on 2024.
As for the reduced yields from the harvest, he said that Champagne, and particularly Bollinger, were buffered against this setback due to the region’s system of keeping a reserve of wines for blending when there is a shortfall.
“Our insurance is the reserve, and for Bollinger, we use 50-60% reserve wines [for its Special Cuvée Brut NV], which is a fantastic insurance for us,” he said.
“If you use 20% reserve wines then if might be difficult to move to organic farming, but we are quite unique with this [high level of] reserve, which means we can be secure in our quality and quantity of wines,” he summed up.
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