Champagne Barnaut

Edmond Barnaut was one of the first pioneers in Champagne to create his own brand outside of the controlling centers of power of Epernay and Reims. He farmed his own vines and started out pressing his and his neighbor’s grapes for houses and delivering the juice to them in Epernay and Ay, but the stuff kept fermenting before he could always make the delivery, so he ended up letting all the juice ferment in his digs in Bouzy before delivering the goods. In other words, he learned how to make wine. In 1874 he married Appoline Godmé-Barancourt (now there’s a name!), heiress to additional vineyards in the village, whereupon he made the leap and set up shop. Cellars were dug as deep as 15 meters underground, and the first cuvée made of two-thirds Pinot Noir and one-third Chardonnay was launched.

1906 cellar of Champagne Barnaut
And it’s still made today, under the Grande Réserve label, with its reserve wine coming from a perpetual cuvée begun by Edmond himself and maintained through five generations of Barnaut descendants. The one big change happened in the late 1950s into the early 1960s, and that was the transition from aging the perpetual cuvée in small barrels to steel tanks. In that era, barrels were kept as long as possible and cleaning them was much more difficult than it is today, resulting in barrels coated in layers of tartaric crystals that effectively did away with any difference between barrels and tanks except in size.