ParcellesInsights
Insights from the data behind Parcelles: the climate, the seasons, the crus, and the walls of Champagne.
A region that's changing
Champagne built its identity on the edge of ripeness. Six decades of weather observations show that edge moving, and climate models say it will keep moving. This is the story of a cool region becoming a warm one.
Read the article →The season as it happens
A vintage is not made in September. It is made in a hundred small days between April and harvest: frost nights, flowering weeks, heat spikes, and the slow accumulation of warmth that decides everything else. Here is how to read a Champagne season while it is still being written.
Read the article →What makes a Grand Cru?
Seventeen villages in Champagne may call themselves Grand Cru. The rank sells bottles, anchors prices, and starts arguments. But it was never a map of terroir: it was a price list, born in a year when the region was burning its own cellars.
Read the article →The walled vineyards
In the backstreets of a Côte des Blancs village, behind an iron gate, less than two hectares of Chardonnay grow inside walls older than the United States. Champagne has only a few dozen vineyards like it. This is why the walls went up, why almost all of them came down, and what the survivors are worth.
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