This category of Champagne is, obviously, the oldest as all Champagne comes from grapes that have to be grown at some stage... however, the emergence of the term Grower Champagne is relatively recent and was brought about by a reflection and reaction against the dominance and sometime homogeneity of the established order, the Grande Marque houses, who had really controlled all production since the 1960s.
Accounting for only 5% of the production in the region, these producers are those who grow the fruit that they use to make their own wine, which sounds rather normal: but in Champagne, this is not the norm, as the large houses as well as mass-produced labels, buy grapes and pre-made wine in bulk from smaller growers, blending to make a house style. Growers don't buy-in grapes and make wine themselves, usually on their own premises.
In the vineyard, they manage vines much the same way that you'd expect a Burgundian or Bordelais producer to do - minimal intervention and little mechanisation. But they're not revolutionary and don't think of themselves in that regard, rather, that they want to return to traditional practices and an equitable business landscape with a more interesting range of terroir-driven Champagnes as a result.
Those that succeed in both independence and the quality required to express terroir in their wines are rare indeed - the harsh method of production for Champagne can remove some of the stylistic typicity of soils and terroir unless the characteristics are profound enough to withstand it. In this small elite are some now-famous names whose wines command eye-watering prices, sitting along side the finest still wines in France.
In terms of "a style", there is of course a sense that the best Growers will express their own, meaning that the notion of any "house style" comes from their own soil and grapes married with the approach in the winery.
There is now a real choice between two worlds of Champagne production - the vast and dominant world conventional hoses, or the tiny world of remarkable, terroir-driven wines being produced by a small bunch of the very finest Champagne growers. Though the growth of the sector is frustratingly slow with the number in the Grower ranks still remarkably low, the wines represented are almost universally scintillating, rewarding and vibrantly living. These qualities can be found in Grande Marques, too, so the only consistent difference is in approach and philosophy: the thing that draws one to the world of fine wines in the first place!
