Tom Stevenson's whole article is at

http://www.wine-pages.com/guests/tom/champagne-expansion.htm

Tom takes an in-depth look at the planned expasion of the Champagne region, exploring the issues, motives, movers and shakers behind the plans. This report first appeared in Wine & Spirit magazine. Our thanks to them for allowing us to reproduce it here.
I have six billion euros.
Who will give me twelve?
Tom Stevenson, 09/08
"Everyone knows that Champagne could easily be expanded by as much as 10,000 hectares," says Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger. Everybody, that is, except me. I figured there might be between 1,200 and 5,000ha of land suitable for good quality Champagne production in the proposed 40 "new" villages. Admittedly, my figures are a guesstimate, but they were not plucked out of thin air. I looked at the current usage in the villages immediately adjacent to the proposed new ones and extrapolated. 5,000ha would create €6 billion in new wealth because the most suitable land for viticulture is the least suitable for any other form of agriculture, and the cheapest farmland in the region ranges from €1,800 in the Haute-Marne to €4,000 in the Marne. On the other hand, the most recent sale of modest, not grand cru, AOC Champagne land was in Bethon, which went for €1.2 million per ha. But if Taittinger is right, the potential for new wealth is €12 billion, not €6 billion.
Bring on the chorus girls
The houses are all singing from the same hymn sheet, and if there is one chorus I have heard more than any other, it is that the growers in general, the Syndicat General des Vignerons (SGV) in particular, are pushing for this expansion. It’s true, in theory at least. The request for an expansion was made formally by the SGV to INAO following a vote at the SGV’s general meeting on April 9 2003, when the motion was carried by 393 votes to 25.
To be polite, I find this perplexing. Are we to believe that the growers actually want to open up their monopoly to new owners and allow in almost one-third more grapes, which can only soften prices and reduce their income? Whatever the documented evidence, the biggest brands have the most to gain and I have been told off the record that it is their hand behind this expansion. I could understand if the leaders of the SGV came to some sort of an arrangement with the upper echelons of the Union des Maisons de Champagne (UMC) for the good of the industry, but this request was not agreed in a smoke-filled room behind closed doors. It was achieved by a democratic vote, which was conclusive; although growers who responded to my questions pointed out, not unreasonably, that the 393 affirmative votes by no means represent the majority opinion among the SGV’s 15,000-plus membership. The subplot is that, because the growers have nothing to gain, it would look good for them to be seen to be initiating this expansion; but how they got the SGV to play ball is subject to a lot of conspiracy theories.