Awards and citations:


1997: Le Prix du Champagne Lanson Noble Cuvée Award for investigations into Champagne for the Millennium investment scams

2001: Le Prix Champagne Lanson Ivory Award for investdrinks.org

2011: Vindic d'Or MMXI – 'Meilleur blog anti-1855'

2011: Robert M. Parker, Jnr: ‘This blogger...’:

2012: Born Digital Wine Awards: No Pay No Jay – best investigative wine story

2012: International Wine Challenge – Personality of the Year Award




Thursday 11 April 2013

The importance of terroir in Champagne . . . .

From a vineyard near Epernay


8 comments:

Angela Reddin said...

Jim, not that I would ever doubt your photos, but please are they still dumping raw rubbish? I thought that had stopped years ago or is this stuff resurfacing after ploughing or something?

Angela Reddin said...

Jim. not that I would ever doubt your photos but ... are they still dumping raw city rubbish in the vineyards? I thought that had been outlawed, or at least stopped years ago?

Jim's Loire said...

Angela. I'm really not sure. We stayed overnight in Dizy and I had time to wander out into a nearby vineyard and there was the plastic. I understand it has long been banned, so perhaps you can see the long term effects of the bags.

Anonymous said...

mmm... biodiversity.

Jennifer Fluteau said...

Hello Jim - Although it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it would appear that you are more or less insinuating that ALL of champagne is one big dumping ground...this seems to me a very unfortunate generalization. I have been living and working with my husband's 75 year old family champagne winery in the Aube, and in the 25 years since I have been here, I have never once seen anyone use the infamous Paris rubbish which was sold as some kind of fertilizer (from what I've been told) AND if you came to our vineyards (9 hectares) you would not see one single bit of garbage, even if you dug a meter deep !
PS. As vice president of the Champagne Independant Winegrowers conventio, I thank you for participating in our conference, although unfortunately I was absent on Friday and thus missed your talk.

Jim's Loire said...

Jennifer. Thank for your message and sorry not to have met you. I'm not insinuating that all Champagne is like this. However, I had just time to step out from my hotel in Dizy and photographed what I saw.

Jennifer Fluteau said...

Did you not see anything else? When I drove up from the Aube on Wednesday the 10th, I saw a myriad of little white trucks in the vineyards, winegrowers stooped over their vines, finishing up the pruning, bending and tying the canes....backbreaking work to say the least. How sad to have only focused on what's negative !

Jim's Loire said...

Thanks Jennifer. I report on what I find whether it is good or bad news – positive or negative. There are plenty of people employed to provide good news stories for Champagne.

As I explained I had a brief time to walk out into the vineyard by my hotel late last Wednesday afternoon. I wasn't looking for the blue pieces of plastic but they were there so I took a photograph of them along with a few other views that grey afternoon before it started raining and I headed back in.