How we check facts
Every number, date and rule on Champoria carries a footnote to the document it comes from, and each page shows the date its facts were last checked.
Which sources count
- Law: EU regulations, national wine laws, appellation rules (cahiers des charges, disciplinari, pliegos de condiciones).
- Official bodies: interprofessions and consortia, such as the Comité Champagne or a regulatory council.
- Peer-reviewed science with a DOI.
- Official statistics.
- A producer's own site, only for facts about that producer.
Encyclopaedias, shops, blogs and press articles are used only to find a primary source, never as the source itself.
How a page is made
- Facts are collected into a research file with the source, its date and the date it was opened.
- The page is written from that file. A fact without a source is left out and listed as a gap.
- A separate check compares a sample of figures with their sources.
- Translations keep the same footnotes in the same places; a script checks that no footnote, link or table row was lost.
Marks you will see
- A small number after a sentence is a footnote; the list of sources is at the bottom of the page.
- "Legend" means a story that tradition tells but documents do not confirm.
- "About" or "estimate" means the source itself gives an approximate figure.
Corrections
Rules change: appellation texts are revised and new figures are published every year. When we find an error or a newer source, we correct the page and update its check date.