Their story

The Copinets used to sell their grapes to a big house. Jacques Copinet, who worked at another, decided in 1975 to make his own grower Champagne in Montgenost, a village of about 140 people at the southern tip of the Côte de Sézanne. His daughter Marie-Laure and her winemaker husband Alexandre Kowal now run the estate, and began converting it to organic farming in 2018.

Their nine hectares are mostly Chardonnay on the chalk of Montgenost and Villenauxe-la-Grande, with Pinot Noir in the Côte des Bar and Meunier in the Vallée de la Marne. The Nos pas dans… series bottles one grape on one soil — chalk, clay, earth, stone — and Argilla Villonissa ages Chardonnay in eggs made from clay dug near the vines.