Champagne DAY 1&2 - TRAVEL, ALAIN GEOFFROY, COESSENS

Bonjour! Hello and off we go to Champagne. After a cheerful goodbye to Hiram we got to

SFO and located French Bee Airline with plenty of time for an airport beer. French Bee airline, never heard of it? Well, it exists and it will get you there. At least in our experience. We opted for the dinner service, but as someone who has accidentally ordered (and eaten) a bowl of baby eels in Vietnam and willingly sought out durian I can tell you it was very bad. Oh well, all the more reason to get out the old neck pillow and try to catch some zzz’s. I found out upon landing that the French Bee is a burgeoning fleet of 6 aircraft and services 8 citites.

After an otherwise uneventful journey we collected our luggage and armed with a full-page itinerary compiled by Martin and Hiram with 2-3 tasting appointments per day we wondered, will we get sick of Champagne? Will we have any enamel left on our teeth?

We made a couple hour journey to the town of Auxerre and were immediately captivated by the riverside town and its quintessential beauty. A stroll less than a block led us to dinner which was wonderful and we enjoyed ALL the white asparagus.

---

ALAIN GEOFFROY

This place is very understated both in its production and the people who run it. The daughter of Alain Geoffroy (who died in 2020), Natalie, though very communicative with us about our visit in the planning stage, was only coaxed out of the office at our insistence for a photo at the end of our visit. Cyrille, the oenologist has been there for more than 30 years was barely glimpsed moving from building to building during our tour. Pascal is the export manager and was our host. The town is very small and their section of town where the winemaking takes place is no different and the operation was rather segmented with tanks in one building and bottling in another. Pascal noted that it would be their preference to expand, but the configuration of the property would not allow it. We were presented with these individual spaces which, for lack of a better word, basic. By that I mean, he showed us the tanks, the few barrels and said, “that’s it.” Then he showed us the bottling area and said, “that’s it.” Like making Premier Cru Chablis is so simple. However, you can tell there’s no guessing here. Adjustments for vintages and the associated difficulties, yes, but everything was more orderly than any winery I’ve seen.

They also have a corkscrew museum. 8000 corkscrews displayed in cases in a labyrinth of corridors and rooms. From the tiniest of corkscrews used to open medicine bottles to Pascal’s favorite, an English anti-alcohol installation with a barbed-wire handle and of course, a few cases of risqué NSFW items, which I had heard about and had looked forward to seeing in person. Is this a work trip?

The tasting itself was as understated as the tour. In the way that you barely notice service at a good restaurant, I had to catch him reaching into their ancient fridge made out of a barrel to get another sample for us and he gave an overview of their vineyards like he was explaining how to find the hotel pool. Doesn’t everyone live in a place that makes incredible wines seemingly with ease? Pascal was exceedingly optimistic about 2024 and we agreed with his assessment and Found out that we have some of the last stocks of Pinot Noir (2023) since they did not make any in 2024-2026. 

By the way, they have HVE3 status, but Pascal is unsure they will keep it. The organic treatments cost more money and take more time. In 2024 they treated the vineyards 15-16 times and normal is 3-4. For the mome

nt they are sticking with it and we certainly appreciate the effort.

---

COESSENS

After a quick lunch (by French standards) we rolled through miles of fields of yellow flowers, which Kristen identified as rapeseed, used to make canola oil. We mapped our way to our next stop –Coessens. My theory about many of our producers with their sometimes humble facilities is all the effort they are not putting into the pomp and circumstance they are putting into winemaking and I stand by that today. We passed by many Champagne estates with big signs and large buildings and when we arrived to Coessons we found a warehouse with two men opposite it working on a jeep. We announced ourselves and asked if we were in the right place and one man said yes and he would call Jerome. Soon thereafter Jerome, his son and his wife Valerie came out and warmly greeted us.

It's always so funny to me how unique each winery’s setup is and could almost never translate to another’s. Almost every winery has another in their community that they either do something for or does something for them. In their case, Coessens has 2 of the scariest pneumatic presses I’ve ever seen and tell me that doesn’t look like the robot from Avitar. They use these puppies to press grapes for 7 growers and they are top of the line and the gentlest way to press grapes.

Anyway, we escaped its clutches and I will stop being silly now because this next part is just splendid.

If it is your dream to be whisked away to a picturesque stone tasting room in the middle of a vineyard in Champagne then I have just lived your dream. Jerome and his wife were clearly so proud of this building and it made a really special way to taste his wines.

English was limited, but Valerie was armed with sticky notes scribbled with translations and Martin fought hard against jet lag and dutifully translated the complexities of the process, but the wines themselves spoke their own language. Just incredible and as we discussed on the ride there, his approach is uniquely Burgundian where he produces wines from a single year, single parcel. It seems the French are very good at map-making and Jerome had some nice ones drawn by his friend that showed the different sections of the vineyards, all remarkably unique. All of our producers are very upfront about challenges with growing, but some techniques for mitigating climate ills I had heard about, but not directly from the people. They are still worried about frost and Jerome had a giant furnace and fan in the middle of the vineyard with a pile wood to heat the air above the middle two vineyards. The outer ones are harder to protect and they have used candles and people for those, but that costs upwards of 4000euro per night.

They opened 6 bottles for us and it feels like that is ¼ of our allocation from him. We get very small quantities, but they’ve gained quite a following, for good reason. I won’t bore you with too many specifics, but these wines are the perfect balance of enjoyable and interesting. When he asked which we would like to try again, we ended up tasting basically all of them, trying to wrap our heads around this unique approach to Champagne. The Rosé is probably the most unique of the lineup and is not the gulpable Rosé that some growers make, but a clear expression of the grapes, terroir and vintage.

One expression that stuck with me was “poids des années” or weight of the vintage, so clearly expressed with these wines.

We bid adieu to our lovely hosts as Valarie stayed in the tasting room equipped with a fireplace to make dinner and we made our way to Troyes for a stopover before our next big day!

Here are Martin Reyes MW's tasting notes:

Coessens Visit Report 2026_MR.pdf

Download PDF • 1.06MB