The Champagne region in France is dominated by a handful of brand names. These négoçiants and coopératives produce 80% of the total output in Champagne, yet they own only 12% of the vineyards. They may, by law, purchase as much of their grapes or pressed juice or already made sparking wine (known as sur-lattes) as they wish from all over the region. And they bring to market a mass-produced commodity-the most successful processed agricultural product in human history-a Champagne made in a "house style." This is a sparkling wine made in a highly interventionist and formulaic way with swift pressing, extensive use of chaptalization, acidification, cultured yeast strains, enzymes, nitrogenous yeast nutrients and rapid temperature controlled fermentations which amounts to millions of cases annually. By contrast, Small Growers, or "récoltant-manipulants," handcraft their limited quantities of Champagne from individual villages and parcels where the inherent qualities of the vineyards imprint themselves into the wines. These winemakers are brave souls in an industrialized age: growing, vinifying and bottling their own Champagne and offering it to the world as their life's work.

  

This may seem reason enough but perhaps all this begs the burning question:

  

1. You should drink grower Champagne if you've forgotten that Champagne is WINE.

 
2. You should drink "farmer-fizz" if you'd rather buy Champagne from a farmer than a factory. 

3. You should drink it if you'd rather have a wine expressive of vineyard, and the grower's own connection to vineyard, than a wine "formed" by a marketing swami who's studied to the Nth-degree what you can be persuaded to "consume."

4. You should drink grower Champagne if the individually distinctive flavors of terroir driven wines matter more than the lowest-common-denominator stuff served up by the mega conglomerates in the "luxury-goods" business. 

5. You should drink it because it is honest wine grown and made by a vintner-by a FAMILY just like yours-by a "him" or "her" and not by an "it." 

6. You should drink it because its price is honestly based on what it costs to produce, not manipulated to account for massive PR and ad budgets, or to hold on to market-share. That's why vintage grower Champagne and tête-de-cuvées are ALWAYS cheaper than the vintage wines from the big houses.

7. You should drink Grower Champagne because-like all hand-crafted, estate-bottled wines-it is not a mere Thing, but a BEING. It's expressive of where it grew and who raised it. In drinking it you help protect DIVERSITY, and diversity leads to VITALITY. And if you'd rather eat a local field-ripened summer tomato rapturous with sweetness than some January tomato you buy at the supermarket hard as a stone and tasting of nothing, you should be drinking farmer-fizz!