Hello !
You are in the right place to find a reply about champagne. We are family business winery in Champagne region, Champagne Damien-Buffet's house. It's a small winery but with quality champagne and not so expensive. For the moment we don't export to Australia but are searching intermediary or shop to do it. But if you want to have a try, you can order some and we'll send it without problem. Unhappily from France to Australia the cost of transport'll be high for the price of a bottle of champagne.
I saw on the forum about "real" champagne. Champagne is only coming from Champagne region. You can find some who sell sparkling wines who are named "champagne" and are not real champagne but in this case, tell to Champagne official french comittee and he'll stop this counterfeit (unofficial) wine name.
In Champagne region, you can find three families : big brands, generally the brands well known all around the world, from big houses : Ruinart, Krug, Moet, Laurent Perrier, Pommery, Taittinger and others. Then you can find champagnes wines from cooperatives. In this case it's a brand created with juices of Champagne vineyard but not only from a winemaker. Many winegrowers give their juices to cooperatives and those one create a collective brand and sell it. It's the case for example for Nicolas Feuillatte or champagne Collet, and many more. Third you find small wineries. Those ones are family businesses, some of them use the cooperatives to share the cost of the press, tanks, etc and then elaborate their own champagnes cuvees. And other family business wineries who are independant winegrower and winemakers.
What you have also to know is that in Champagne region it has champagne grand cru, champagne premier cru and others champagnes. Grand cru is champagne from a few villages who are the better soil and exposure so has the best possibility to have if the weather is good some good juices for elaborating the best champagnes possibles. Then premier cru are for other villages who have a very good soil and exposure for great chances to have good juices and elaborated great champagnes. The others are not classified but have good wines. But the vineyard is perhaps a bit less well known or not a so good exposure or soil. So most of the winemakers of those others villages do their best to increase the quality of their grapes, juices and champagnes. And for a lot of them it's the case.
In Champagne region you can find three cepages chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier. So you can find 100% of one of those cepage in a champagne bottle or a mix of them when the wine is elaborated, what we call assemblage.
Now it depend of what you prefer to drink and with what you'll taste it (for aperitive, meal, with fish, meat, cheese, cake etc...) if it's very hot often champagne lovers prefer 100% chardonnay (also called blanc de blancs because it's done with the only grapes who are white and give white juice in Champagne) or you'll prefer "rosé" it's the champagne with pink colour. It's elaborated with a mix of chardonnay for the freshness and pinot noir.
Now if you want to discover really how it is in Champagne region, come and visit us. We'll be happy to welcome you. We open doors and do cellar doors prices.
For global champagne day on october 20 we organize a great event at the winery in Sacy. It's a small beautiful village at 8 kms from Reims the city who many french kings were crown in the cathedral who is on World Heritage Unesco list. Like Hillsides, Houses and Cellars of Champagne are now also on this list since 2015.
Hope it'll help to reply to your question about champagne beverage and Champagne region.
We are allways happy to share our passion with other champagne and wines lovers