Join us for a fantastic tasting of our favorite Grower Champagnes throughout the years!
We will offer light snacks and open discussion. You do not need to be a wine expert to attend. Just come thirsty and have an appetite for learning!
“Grower Champagne” generally refers to wines from the Champagne region of France that are made and bottled by the same person who grew the grapes. This is different from wines produced by Champagne houses — think Veuve Clicquot or Pol Roger — which typically (but not always!) blend together grapes grown by dozens, or sometimes even hundreds, of individual grape growers from across the region.
For hundreds of years, that was more or less the order of things: Farmers farmed, houses did the rest, with very occasional exceptions made by the odd grower who undertook their own bottling for personal consumption, or who made at most a few hundred cases a year for the wine bars in Paris, perhaps. But then a major moment for change began in 1994, when the influential Gault Millau guide declared an independent grower Champagne maker, Anselme Selosse, to be the finest winemaker in France. Selosse in turn inspired a whole new generation of independent Champagne winemakers — many of whom are second-, third-, or fourth-generations inheritors of family vines — to begin bottling and selling for themselves, in addition to the ongoing practice of selling fruit to the big houses. Consumer interest soon followed, and today there are many excellent grower Champagne options available to drinkers in the United States."
-Eater Magazine
21+ please!