Champagne Selected for UNESCO World Heritage Candidacy

For Immediate Release March 13, 2015 The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has officially selected the candidacy of “Hillsides, Houses and Wine Cellars of Champagne” to represent France in the “cultural landscapes” title, during its 39th annual session in Bonn, Germany. This follows eight years of intense preparation for the candidature. Until now, UNESCO has mostly recognized vineyards for their spectacular or extraordinary beauty (Lavaux – Switzerland, Le Douro – Portugal, Pico - Acores), or for the site’s historical character (Tokaj – Hungary, St-Emilion – France). “Hillsides, Houses and Wine Cellars of Champagne” is notably different than other wine-growing landscapes currently recognized by UNESCO. This is due to the specificity of the profile of Champagne and its production, which has lead to an agro-industrial development of the growing area, a process that required precise collaboration between “man and nature.” The resulting product is known today as Champagne wine. Champagne’s case involves a series of places representative of the diversity and specificity of its wine-growing territory. Shaped predominantly by its geographic location, Champagne is also a land where man molded a unique heritage (rural, urban and underground) into the chalk, and from this typically inhospitable earth produced a sparkling wine product appreciated the world over. Three principal sites have been selected to represent the 319 communes of the Champagne AOC and are considered to most embody the work of production, development and commercialization of Champagne’s wine. • The wine-growing hillsides opposite the Marne Valley, the oldest of the Champagne wine region, between Hautvillers and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ. • The demonstrative, yet functional buildings erected by the Champagne Houses on the Saint-Nicaise hill in Reims and the spectacular underground cathedrals that are the chalk quarries. • The row of elegant traders’ houses mixed with the production sites on Avenue de Champagne in Epernay, and the kilometers of networked wine cellars that form a real town beneath the town. The Association Paysages du Champagne noted that the addition of the “Hillsides, Houses and Wine Cellars of Champagne” to the World Heritage list would be a significant step towards collective efforts to preserve and increase the status of wine-growing landscapes in France. Moreover, the inclusion of this Champagne landscape would serve to better recognize the unique heritage of the area and the human innovations that led to the successful development process of Champagne to become the global model for sparkling wines. The 39th session of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee will convene June 28-July 8.