Champagne Day 4 – Part 1 – Lacourte Godbillon
- Elaine Cadman
- May 26
- 4 min read
We have 23 bottles of gifted wine in the car. Well, technically they’re at the Gîte, which is good because today we picked up Thomas Calder to accompany us on our visits and
managed to quickly get to know him by stuffing him in with us in the back seat with me and Kristen. None of us had met Thomas, but we’ve been working with him for years. I wouldn’t say he’s quiet, but he’s not loud either and he has that East Coast humor that only people who have lived for an extended period of time somewhere that suffers from non-skiable snow can know and appreciate.
Thomas is a broker. I’m not sure if that’s exactly the right title or if it is I’m not crazy about it because it makes it sound like either we need help choosing producers or our producers have so much money they have the luxury of outsourcing their “marketing”. The truth is much messier and more human. As you’ve probably gathered by now all of our producers are really busy. We’re really busy. Hugh said, he knows if he sees ‘A Thomas Calder Selection’ on the label that he can trust the wine. We, of course, have that same aim with WineWise.
Some of Thomas’ role will become a bit clearer when I describe our Remy visit, but when we find a broker we trust we usually take on several of the producers they represent. Their fee is paid by the producers so although it’s surely baked into the cost of the wine we purchase, we’re not paying them directly. They do things like find out any information we need, taste new vintages and coordinate payments. It can be challenging to get samples to us before we need to place an order and brokers generally live in the area they are representing so have a good pulse on their wines. We email Thomas about these things frequently and he’s never steered us wrong with his judgements and makes transactions and the flow of information much easier.
We had an 11AM tasting appointment at Lacourte Godbillon, but we had an extra 12 whole minutes so we got to cruise along Avenue de Champagne, which is kind of like the Las Vegas strip passing the flashy Wynn and the Bellagio Fountain. Fancy building facades and recognizable Champagne names.
LACOURTE GODBILLON –
Along we went to meet Géraldine at Lacourte Godbillon, our poised and cheerful host. "Park around the corner near the basektball hoop," Thomas instructed. This is the kind of insider info we rely on.
Géraldine and her husband had careers in not-wine, but they took over the estate, previously run by her parents, when she was 35. While the infrastructure was all in place and her parents began making wine in 1968 after selling grapes to the big Champagne houses for generations, she and her husband have taken the operation to the next level.
They have embraced bio-dynamic practices and made careful adjustments with oak and aging bottles. They grow all of their own grapes.
Another stunning tasting and Martin said at some point when he was studying Champagne he was taught that the grapes and soil didn’t matter, it all came down to the house producing the wine and how they manipulated it. We had a good laugh about that. Our grower producers have to fight hard against that idea since it is still perpetuated by the big Champagne houses, but there have been so many instances on this trip where we’ve tasted the same variety from the same vintage vinified in the same way from two different terroirs and they’re very different.
It's worth pointing out that not only does Lacourte Godbillon practice sustainability with their wines, but Géraldine and her husband Richard have embraced the philosophy with their employees as well. They have many full time employees so everyone knows the ins and outs of the processes and they have a lot of consistency. You can either pay workers during harvest by the hour or by the bucket, but as you can imagine when you pay people by the bucket the quality can suffer so they choose to pay by the hour. I wouldn’t call these ‘little’ things, but everything contributes to the final product and the care and attention is really apparent in their wines.
We had the most picturesque lunch with Géraldine, Thomas and the four of us at a place
just down the road from Lacourte Godbillon. The weather has been excellent while we’re here and we sat on the patio. Thomas immediately ran into someone he knew, one of the producers he represents, so we had a bottle of her Champagne, Bertrand-Delespierre with lunch, which was lovely. We’re all still not quite sure if Hugh’s obsession with white asparagus is just an act or if anyone can be genuinely that excited by a vegetable. Seeking it out has become kind of a side challenge of the trip and we’re really doing well.
Comments