danb-
Technically you are not allowed to leave grapes on the vines within the Champagne AOC - it is one of the many rules. You can use a harvest machine to shake them off though, that's acceptable (not acceptable for the grapes used to make champagne, they have to be hand picked).
The restricted yield, on paper, allows growers to be more selective with their picking so you would keep the best and put the lesser one to the ground.
Our vineyards have organic credentials in France and we use no herbicides/ pesticides. We also manage grass between our rows and use no fertilisers.
It is a lot more labour intensive and it naturally lower the yield to about 10,000kg in a good year without straining the vines - thus getting a higher quality of grape.
So for us, it tends to balance out.
For others, who use herbicides/pesticides/a raft of fertilizer and prune "hard" in the winter, they would have achieve a yield of about 15 to 18,000kg this year so they would need to cut half of their grapes to the ground.
The Champagne AOC does not allow you to make other wines with surplus grapes so the best you'd do would be vinegard or hydro-alcoholic gel, which does not pay sufficiently to warrant doing so.
So all those producers have strained their vineyards and poisoned the ground for absolutely no reason this year.
But hey, Tesco and Aldi need Champagne at £12 per bottle so that's that - cut corners to get people what they want!
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Vince
Yield regulation
The harvest base yield fixed by the INAO is 10,400 kg/ha, revisable upwards or downwards depending on the quality and quantity of the yield but capped at 15,500 kg/ha for AOC production.
The rationale for capping yields lies in the high-density planting system in Champagne, with vines planted very close together (8,000 per hectare) to improve ripening and therefore quality. Limited juice extraction – just 102 litres of must per 160 kg of grapes – is a key part of this policy and brings the final yield to 66 hectolitres per hectare.
2020
Houses have been given the AOC 7,000kg per hectare immediately, whilst grower-producers will be given 8,000 kg. If sales figures reach 202 million bottles this year, then Houses will be authorised to use a further 1000 kg per hectare. If these sales are not met, then this 1000kg will be authorised as part of the 2021 yield. Given that the average over the last decade has been 13,500 kg, this represents a large drop in income for growers.