Welcome to our world of champagne

 

Step by step we would like to invite you on a journey into the passionate world of champagne.

Born in Denmark and France, we have come from two different worlds, but chosen to share one.

It is our hope that Champagne Tange-Gerard will bring together the best from our countries of origins.

• That France and Denmark shall meet and the shifty poetry of the North connect with French reason and logic.
  
• That all these elements may become bubbles in a glass of nicely chilled champagne.
  
• That for a while the bubbles will make your world spin in an easy-going, funny fashion.

Enjoy, Alain Gérard and Solveig Tange  

White frost covers the second and left generation of grapes in Soulieres.

About Alain Gérard

 

Each winter the vines are pruned manually and the branches burned in a wheelbarrow.

"Why would you want to do something else, when you can do this every day?" No, actually, why bother? The idea was already present somewhere in Alain Gérards mind for a long time. His former collegue from England just happened to be the first to put it in words.

About one year later Alain finally decided to step into it. Stopped his career as a manager of the French daughter company of the English Higgins Group. Specialised in potatoes he’d operated all over Europe for more than 15 years. For a long time with this wish to return to the roots, the family vineyards, once he’d seen and learned enough about the world of potatoes.

The vineyards begin a stone’s throw from the family farm. Alain has learned about it since childhood. From his mother whom he had to follow from small age, and from his grandfather and uncle. Thus he learned it all the old fashioned way, where one generation transmits its know-how to the next as it has been done in the countryside for centuries. Alain listened to it all.

Today however, he combines it with his own thinking. A logic, that combines his higher engineering education from ESAP: Ecole Superieure d’Agriculture de Purpan in Toulouse and the experience obtained through the work with farmers all over Europe for so many years.

In 1997 he took over the first of a number of family vineyards to become a weekend winegrower in Champagne. With the next plot in 2006 the total acreage was more than one hectare, and the idea to become a fulltime winegrower moved closer. In 2009 the old dream finally became reality.

 

Alain Gérard in a coffee-break at the grapeharvest in 2008.

Our terroirs in Champagne

 

The vineyards of Champagne are small, these are situated between the villages Soulieres and Givry-les-Loisy.

The vineyards of Champagne are small. With an average size of just 12 ares or the equivalent of 1200 square meters, these vineyards are in fact the smallest average in France. Each time they are passed on from one generation of winegrowers to the next, they become even smaller. Ours are no exception.

Alain and his two sisters own three hectares of mainly Chardonnay- and Pinot Meunier-grapes and a little bit of Pinot Noir on top. These vines have all been planted from the beginning of the 1960’es and into the 1980’es which gives them an age between 30 and 50 years. Considerable in Champagne where the average is 35 years. Our vines however still supply a sufficient amount of high quality grapes.

Our plots are situated in three different places in the communes of Souliéres and Givry-les-Loisy and Loisy-en-Brie just outside the Côte des Blancs-region near another terroir known as the Val du Petit Morin.

The plots are Les Crochettes, Belles Feuilles and Vieilles Grandmeres.

They are all placed on the côte above Vertus. This slope follows a north-south and later an east-west direction in a height of 250 meters above the sea. At its feet the farmed land of a vast plain begins, the Champagne Crayeuse.

All the vineyards will eventually be replanted in the next decades as we will take over the daily work in the last two hectares that currently are explored by a cousin. This will also be the opportunity to analyse the contents of the soils in order to decide if and where we can do our own single plot champagne.

 

The view from the plots of the Vieilles Grandmeres towards the flat Champagne Crayeuse.

Selection makes the world your oyster

 

The bubbles of this vintage champagne are small and fine

Selection is the absolute top of our champagne range. A champagne that represents the most sophistiquated quality this region has to offer. An old vintage champagne made with selected grapes, in this case 100 % Chardonnay.

We choose these white grapes with greatest care. Only from the very best plots amongst our group of growers and only in years where the important balance between acidity and sugar is simply perfect. This provides an extraordinary high quality of grapes, a crucial basis to achieve the wanted level of quality. Still wines that hold promising scents and tastes from their very beginning. Where all extraordinary champagnes start. Further a vinification with utmost care and the extreme importance of age. No vintage champagne can be younger than three years, the current Selection is already more than double.

Still wines of Champagne are usually rather acid. The Selection still wines are no exception, but they will spend so many years in the cave that this surplus acidity will diminish naturally. We take our time to see this jewel of our gem develop its full potential. The malolactic fermentation that is often used to remove some acidity is blocked to help the still wines keep their juvenile beaty. The years in the caves let Selection transform into this rich type of champagne. A true reward of scents and tastes of fruits that are preserved more fully.

This is a Blanc de Blancs that provides you the full range of the wonders of Chardonnay-grapes. A fine nose with scents of yellow fruits like abricots and Mirabelle-plums as well as a sweetness that in French is referred to as Pate de Fruit. Along with the sugar you discover a sensation of grill or toast - Torrefaction. A sensation that truly reveals a well-matured champagne since it develops only with time as the wine ages in the caves.

As you continue to sip the wine, turn it around in your mouth before you finally swallow. You will experience a surprisingly powerful and yet delicate wine. Fruity and buttery and with the sweet sensation of pastries returning to your palate. A pleasant mineral sensation will round off with a freshness that occupy your mouth for quite a while before it finishes off this dome of different scents and tastes with an elegant finish of lemon.

Selection is dosed very low with just 8 grams of sugar per litre of wine.

You will not taste Selection before it has spend at least five years in its amber-coloured bottle with pretty engraved grapes. With the right cellar you may want to keep the current vintage of 2002 for another five-ten years to get the most of an already special wine.

 

 

You may find the brown colour of our vintage champagne of selected plots in the vineyards as the young branches harden into real wood in the months after the grapeharvest.

The grand tradition of Champagne is to blend

 

Our champagne matures in the cave in boxes like these.

Our Tradition is a champagne, that represents a long time art in Champagne: The tradition of blending. White base wines of different plots, vines and vintages are mixed and fermented in bottles followed by a slow maturation in cool caves. The Methode Champenoise.

The blend reflects the tradition and terroir of the growers. Our group of growers is based in the village of Vertus in the Côte des Blancs, where Chardonnay is king. The blend thus contains at least 90% white Chardonnay-grapes and up to 10% red Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Up to 10% of the Chardonnay wines will be older reserve wines, that are added to the blend to preserve the same style of taste year after year. This is also why the exact percentages of the blend may vary slightly between the years.

We like our champagnes mature, and we usually sell our Tradition not younger than five years. Our current Tradition is made with base wines from 2004. It combines the freshness and elegance of the Chardonnay-grape with some body and structure brought by the Pinot grapes.

Due to age, more complex aromas have partly replaced the fresh fruits of a younger champagne. You may find notes of yellow fruits like apricot, Mirabelle plum and peach as well as volatile scents of fine flowers on the nose. A distinct taste of age that some describe as mushrooms and others as soil or forest takes over before a pleasant yet fresh finale will stay in your mouth for a while.

A bit of sugar dissolved in some reserve wine is used at dosage to top up the bottle after an inevitable loss of a few centilitres of champagne at the disgorging, that follows the many months of maturation in the caves. With just 9,5 grams of sugar per litre of wine our dosage is rather low for a brut.

Tradition will fit your aperitif amongst friends perfectly as well as serve as an icebreaker at a bigger party. It will accompany your meals with white fish or seafood as well.

The Tradition exists in a Demi-Sec version too. This sweet champagne will fit your dishes with foie gras and desserts as long as they are not too sweet.

 

 

The vine is pruned in order to secure a number of the fertile one-year old branches.

Cooperatives changed the champagne world forever

The cooperative movement in Champagne has made winegrowers more independent than before. We elaborate our champagnes with a group of winegrowers from the same area. Like us, most of them own a few hectares of vineyards but most only run around half a hectare or less. When we join forces and grapes we can use equipments in a more efficient way and we can blend more wines with a final higher and more stable quality than from just one.

Most are based in the village of Vertus, others in neighbouring communes like Bergeres-les-Vertus and our own commune of Soulieres. In total grapes from 147 hectares are pressed and fermented into wines. This is enough to fill more than one million bottles of the standard size of 75 centilitres every year.

Our cooperative was founded in 1959. 30 years after it all began. The starting point of the movement was the great depression in 1929. Champagne sales dropped dramatically. The stocks of the champagne houses grew bigger, and the prices of grapes smaller. In the beginning of the 1930’es the grapes were so cheap that it was hardly worth it for the winegrowers to pick them up. At this stage some decided to press and ferment themselves rather than sell grapes at a loss. The wine and eventually the champagne could be sold.

The movement spread. Today 137 champagne cooperatives are supplied by 13.000 winegrowers. One fifth of these sell their own brand of champagne. Like us.

Today the services of our coop include the full chain of champagne making: Pressing, winemaking, bottle fermentation and aging with state-of-the-art equipment to fit all possible needs. On top, the knowledge of how the still wines and champagnes develop at different stages from young to mature and aged. Indispensable for the art of blending as the heart of champagne is the olfactory and gustatory memories of the winemakers.

Each year we work in this small committee of winegrowers who meet regularly in the autumn to taste and discuss the new still wines with the winemaker. We select those that will fit our needs in the required quantities for each future blend. The surplus is sold to several champagne houses. In February we progress and discuss – at times rather fiercely – the new possible blends. This is when the style of our champagnes is decided.

So far we can fit our own needs into the possibilities offered. Our grapes are present with those of the other coop growers in order to elaborate high quality blends and select the best plots for special champagnes.

Our ambition is to add pure Tange-Gérard plots to our current range of products when we have had the necessary time to evaluate the wines that can be elaborated with them. This is a process that will take a bit of time and it will later combine with sustainable winegrowing which is also part of our thinking.

About Solveig Tange

 

Solveig prunes Pinot Meunier-vines in Loiey-en-Brie on a cold winter's day in January 2009.


As a Dane Solveig Tange knew no more about champagne than most people when she arrived in the region of Champagne in 2003: 1) If somebody buys you champagne you get a special treat. 2) Quality champagne is likely to make you feel good fast. Her horizon widened considerably as she decided to get deeper involved in the work with the grapes.

She had already had her first rendez-vous with the grapes in 2002. One day of vendange is not much but it was enough to understand that the only way you can join this special world of vineyards and wines is to do it yourself. Her first full grape harvest was in 2004. Two years later she passed her pruning exams - a proud moment indeed - and since very useful as well.

The process of pruning is long and hard. From January to the month of March each vine is manually reduced to very little to maintain the health of the plants. Later surplus buds will be removed, the new branches bound and surplus branches removed and the rest rearranged along the wires. The work in the vineyards follows the seasons and provides simple pleasures of the open air. Nature as it is: Always the same, yet constantly changing.

Originally trained as a journalist, she came from a world of words. What could be more natural than to nail this new perspective of life with her poetic approach? A book about champagne from her perspective in the vineyards is on its way, and the blog about the work in the vineyards spiced up with photos, local angles and news from the business ensures her daily need of telling it all.

Since 2009 the Champagne Tange-Gerard label has made a big dream come true. It is the end of story of the grapes, but also where it all basically begins. The story of champagne begins in the vineyards and ends in the glasses, and everything in between is worth telling in words and try in tastes. This is all about selling a wine of course, but it is also about exchanging a passion. This is where everybody who likes or may like champagne can meet on common ground and talk about it. Here in Champagne or wherever you are. You may even like Solveig discover that the more you taste and talk, the bigger your envy to taste even more.