With champagne, big can be beautiful, too

New York

OVER the past 15 years, the rising appeal of grower champagne, wine produced by small farmers who grow their own grapes, has transformed our notion of what the region's wines can be.

These farmers demonstrated that champagne could be as much a distinctive expression of place as any other great wine, rather than the smoothly consistent product portrayed in so many marketing campaigns, blended to meet a house style year after year by consummate cellar masters. The movement effectively splattered vineyard dirt over champagne's urbane, tuxedoed image, redirecting the narrative from the cellar and placing it back on the farm.