Of all the regions in France to be a fledgling winemaker, getting started in Champagne must be the toughest challenge of all.
Grape contracts are fiercely protected. The big champagne houses control 65 per cent of the output and 90 per cent of the export market for the region and have huge marketing budgets. And the same traditional houses(Moët Hennessy, Laurent-Perrier and the rest) snap up any sliver of land that might come up for sale - usually way before it even gets to market.
If that's not enough, wines are tied up for years sitting on their lees and getting the bubble-creating secondary fermentation in bottle before being released to market, making production and storage costs toe-curlingly expensive.
Because of all this, when new champagnes make it to the shelf they usually come from existing houses, like the Roederer Brut Nature that saw its inaugural 2006 vintage last September. Hats off, then, to two new ventures.
First up a pair of French entrepreneurs Alexandre Cornot and Arnaud Dupuis-Testenoire, who, in 2008, founded a new champagne house, called Champagne Brimoncourt. Its first bottles of Brut Régence NV made it to market in 2013. They had no background in the industry (Cornot was born in the region but had left to become a successful art dealer, while his business partner came from the steel industry and has since moved on again), but used their business skills and love of champagne to attract a dozen small shareholders to help fund the venture, which is based in the Marne town of Aÿ (home to Ayala and Bollinger).
This month sees another new launch. It's the first vintage (2006, again) from Champagne Barons de Rothschild - itself a company created from scratch just 10 years ago by banking industry doyens and Bordeaux royalty the Rothschilds, with the first NV bottle released on the market in 2009.