Champagne Receives World-Heritage Status

The Ideal Wine Company were pleasantly surprised to learn last week, that various wine-making sites throughout the French region of Champagne have been awarded world-heritage status.

World-Heritage status

There are sites across the world which have a special cultural and/or natural significance to humanity. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) set up the World Heritage Committee in the latter half of the 20^th Century, to ensure that these sites are protected for the benefit of future generations.

The Committee, which is composed of representatives of the 21 UNESCO member states, carries out this task by awarding these sites ‘world-heritage status,’ based on six cultural and four natural criteria. Sites that make it onto the list can include buildings, cities, deserts, forests, islands and even lakes, and as of July 2015, there are 1031 sites on the planet that have been awarded world-heritage status.

39^th World Heritage Committee

UNESCO held the 39^th Session of the World Heritage Committee on Sunday 5^th July, 2015. They used this as an opportunity to award world-heritage status to a number of culturally and physically significant sites including the vineyards of Burgundy. See why this famous wine-making region was awarded such a prestigious honour, by purchasing one of the fine Burgundian wines sold by the Ideal Wine Company.

Another wine-making region that was honoured by the World Heritage Committee at its 39^th Session was Champagne; a land which is known for making the sparkling wine which bears its name. The Committee awarded world-heritage status to the Champagne industry’s vineyards, production sites, and sales points.

According to Quartz, the UN agency published a press release which explained why the “hillsides, houses, and cellars” of the Champagne wine region in the North-East of France deserve recognition. It said that: “The property encompasses sites where the method of producing sparkling wines was developed on the principle of secondary fermentation in the bottle since the early 17th century to its early industrialization in the 19th century.”

Try Champagne

UNESCO awarded sites in Champagne world-heritage status because they were integral to the development of the fermentation process, which allowed the world to produce sparkling wine. If you want to see why the region has been heralded for its role in the creation of sparkling wine, why don’t you try one of the Ideal Wine Company’s Champagnes, which you can buy from our website for very reasonable prices right now!