Champagne Collet: 100 years of Champagne’s first cooperative

There’s no doubt that Champagne conjures up what the French call joie de vivre, which always sounds racier than just ‘fun’. And there was certainly fun to be had when Champagne Collet celebrated their centennial anniversary at London’s Lansdowne Club in April 2022. At the 100th birthday dinner, guests were served five Collet cuvées alongside elegant canapés and food.

Collet may not be one of Champagne’s giant brand names, but claims an impressive tradition as the oldest Champagne cooperative.

Founded in 1921, Collet is based in the famed grand cru village of Aÿ and was originally called Champagne Raoul Collet, after the founder.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for five Champagne Collet wines

The beginnings of Champagne cooperatives

The cooperative movement emerged after World War I, when Champagne’s vineyards were hit with multiple blights: the microscopic aphid phylloxera had devastated harvests, and it took time to renew vineyards by replanting vines with resistant rootstocks; vineyard areas shrank as a result of shelling as war waged across them; and the war’s aftermath saw demand for Champagne plummet, meaning the region’s grape farmers struggled to sell their grapes.

The answer for many growers, instead of selling grapes to the houses, was to form a cooperative, pool their grapes, and make and sell Champagne as a team effort under a cooperative label.

Collet flourished, with its leader Raoul Collet eventually awarded France’s Legion d’Honneur.

By 1930, more cooperatives had emerged. Fast forward to 2022 and there are now 130 cooperatives making 9% of all Champagne, both own brand labels or wines sold as private labels to many of Europe’s supermarkets.

Cooperatives’ clever tentacles cover bottles their growers sell, still wines for the big houses to turn into Champagne, grapes, and pressed juice.

The biggest cooperatives make a range of flagship Champagnes, and many of these will be familiar names. The biggest of them all, Nicolas Feuillatte, is now number one for sales in France, and number three for sales worldwide.

But Collet had more to celebrate at the recent tasting and dinner than its 100-year roots in Champagne history. In 2020, it broke ties with Alliance Champagne – the vast cooperative federation of Champagnes Jacquart, Pannier and Devaux – wanting to be independent once more.

It boasts 800 grower members, with 150ha of vineyards. The crown jewels are the four-fifths of its Champagne made from grand and premier cru fruit – the top ranking of potential quality in Champagne, from within a 30km radius of Epernay, Champagne’s heartland.

The tasting

Guests arrived for a pre-dinner overture in which the Lansdowne Club’s Art Deco lounge and the ideal canapé cuvée, Art Deco 1er Cru NV, uncannily chimed with the acumen of party planners. There’s a luxurious feel of cream and exotic fruit about this beginner wine in the range, with a flattering sweet note to finish that guests clearly loved.

The smash hit of the dinner came before the starter: Cuvée No21 NV. As the name suggests, this is a limited edition to mark Collet’s 100 year anniversary. Just over 5000 bottles were made. It’s a blend of 21 vintages from 1961 to 2012, and with seven years on lees; this has taken 58 years to make! It had a silky texture and refinement. The sophisticated, svelte weight and gentle persistence was convincing evidence of its sourcing from eight grands crus and several premiers crus too.

With such aged wines in the blend I expected maybe something a little wilting, but the lemon-butter zestiness suggested remarkably well-kept reserve wines, and quite an achievement.

The other wines showed well too. The beautifully nervy and mineral Blanc de Blancs 1er Cru NV matched a smoked trout starter very neatly, and its reined in, modest dosage of 7g/L seemed correct and elegant.

The Millésime 2008 showed the power and youthful finesse of this great year, an almost 50/50 blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, giving a restrained and slightly closed impression, maybe because of the as yet steely and lissom Chardonnay component.

I felt the Demi-Sec NV, lushly-dosed at 40g/L, was too sweet for the baked tart and poached plum dessert, but for those that love old-fashioned, confectionery Champagne this will have fans.

See tasting notes and scores for five Champagne Collet wines:

Related content:

Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque Blanc de Blancs: 2012 release and vertical tasting

Krug Grande Cuvée: new 170th edition and vertical tasting

Major Champagne merger for Nicolas Feuillatte to go ahead