The Women of Champagne
3/2/26 -
Wine often feels very much like a man's world, but historically speaking, women are no stranger to being at the helm of Champagne houses. Barbe-Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin famously was the first woman to ever run a Champagne house. Additionally, she made advancements to the winemaking process such as the creation of the riddling table (or A-rack), which is still used today over 200 years later! At a time when women couldn’t vote, she paved the way for many to follow with great success. The 19th century was a shining time for women in the region and I believe you can see that same energy today. In honor of the arrival of Hélène Charbaut’s newest release, and International Women's Day just next week, I have selected a few of my favorite female winemakers from Champagne to highlight today!
-Hanna Krilov Cohen
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Hélène Charbaut (pictured above with a lineup of her wines) is not unlike many winemakers of her generation. She is the fourth generation of her family to tend vines in the Vallée de la Marne, but not knowing exactly what she wanted to do at first, she left home to gain experience. She completed her wine management degree in Dijon, served in a marketing role for Bouchard Pere et Fils, and then went to Champagne Leclerc Briant where she became fascinated with Biodynamics. In 2019 she went on to get her BTS in Viticulture Oenology and worked at Péhu Simmonet. David Péhu encouraged Hélène to return home to her family vines. When she did, her parents asked her not to touch the style of her grandfather’s wines, so she roped off her favorite vineyard sites and got to work on her eponymous label. She now farms about 3 hectares of some of the oldest vines in the family across the villages of Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Avenay Val d’Or, and Bisseuil and focuses on single vintage, single grape varietal wines with longer wood aging in comparison to the more traditional style of her family’s Guy Charbaut Champagnes.
In the cellar she attempts the lowest intervention as possible with natural yeast fermentation in old barrels. The wines age for 10 months in barrel before bottling. Charbauterie spends approximately 19 months sur lattes while the vintage dated wines spend 42 months. The cellar is unlike most I’ve ever seen. Built between 1810-1820, running 3km underground, it feels like stepping back in time. Hélène explained how the cellars were used as school classrooms during WWII and that sometimes when the family moves bottles away from the walls they find drawings from the school-children! Everywhere you look there is another tunnel with stacks upon stacks of bottles patiently waiting for disgorgement (although most of these wines aren’t Hélène's but the wines of Guy Charbaut!). As of this past May, Hélène estimated there were about 600,000 bottles, yet space for upwards of 1 million if all the cellar was full. Her wines are barely a fraction of this! When she started with the 2020 vintage she made just 3,500 bottles. In 2021, 8,000 bottles, and with this release of 2022s, she hit about 10,000.
All of this amazing history and story continue into simply delicious wines. Before visiting Hélène, I had only ever tasted two of her wines from her second release, so I was incredibly excited to try the full lineup. As the wines weren’t quite yet ready, Hélène was kind enough to disgorge her upcoming release (that we have available today). Even though they were technically “unfinished,” the wines were anything but! Her goal of highlighting singular grape varieties, vintages, and plots is evident as each wine is incredibly distinct and delicious in its own right.
Due to incredibly limited quantities, we have placed a 1 bottle limit on some bottlings from Hélène Charbaut in order to share these special wines with as many of you as possible.
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Nicole Moncuit and Valerie Charpentier
The Moncuit family is on its third generation of vignerons, and second generation of female winemakers. Even though the family has been in the Cotes des Blancs since the end of the 19th century, it wasn’t until the early 1950s that Pierre Moncuit began to bottle estate-grown Champagnes. He passed the vines over to his daughter Nicole in 1977 who has helped to form the Moncuit wines we know and love today. In 2007, her daughter Valerie Charpentier joined and slowly began taking over the full management of the estate. They create truly incredible blanc de blancs of terroir from incredibly old vines. Each wine is made from a single vintage and Nicole points out that “this practice allows each wine to more precisely express its particular growing season and makes the evolution in the cellar more fascinating to follow as the years unfold.”
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Diane Jacquinet represents the fifth-generation of winemakers from the Dumez and Jacquinot families. Her family has been in the region since 1935, and when her father took over as winemaker in 1984 he did a lot of work to modernize the domaine, and was the first in the family to stop selling grapes to the local co-op. Today, the winery is in the process of converting to organic farming. I was recently introduced to these wines and was incredibly impressed with the energy and expressiveness of these Champagnes, and at a very approachable price too! I think this is only the beginning of amazing wines we should expect from Diane Jacquinet!
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Lucille and Hugues Godmé
The Godmé family have been making wines since the 19th century, however it wasn’t until after WWII that they began bottling under their family name, and in 1976 Hugues received his first vineyard after completing viticulture school. In 2006 he began to farm organically and was certified in 2013, with biodynamic certification coming the following year. Today, his daughter Lucille has continued on her father’s path, with a strong commitment to farming practices that better the vine. She has ensured the continuity of the Godmé style that we all know and love, made with spontaneous fermentation in neutral oak and cement tanks. The plots are vinified individually allowing for their own characters to shine through.
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