Champagne Lacourte-Godbillon
Géraldine Lacourte's grandparents on both sides were grape growers, having started their vineyards in the late 40’s following the end of WWII. Both families, at the time called Lacourte-Labasse and Godbillon-Marie, sold bulk wines to customers to directly take home in their cars. And then in 1968, the two families unified by marriage, Géraldine’s parents founded Lacourte-Godbillon and bottled just a few thousand bottles a year, while selling the rest of their fruit to the local cooperative.
Forty years later, along with her husband Richard Desvignes, Géraldine quit her executive job and returned to the country to take the next step on a multi-generational ladder.
The domaine's 20 acres are all in the village of Écueil, a broad, rolling slope in the heart of the Petite Montagne, the western arm of the greater Montagne de Reims. The vines come from Géraldine's ancestors, who brought together the Lacourte and Godbillon family holdings when they married and created the domaine after WWII in 1947.
Géraldine and Richard left their corporate gigs in Paris in 2006 to take over the estate, and immediately started putting money into the right place - the vines. They converted first to organic farming, and subsequently to Biodynamics - the most expensive and labor-intensive way to go. The payoff has now arrived in the form of exquisitely beautiful wines, wines that I'm proud to welcome to the Caveau world.
Fine wine is one thing you can't just "throw money at" and make a great product (though many try, and many would like to make you believe that. But we digress...) The truth is it takes not only deep resources, but a deep dedication to quality and a commitment to excellence. You simply cannot cut any corners and hope to make great wine - especially in the vineyards. Why is it that so many producers are happy to show you their gleaming stainless-steel tanks in the winery, but are hesitant to take you on a tour of their vines? It's usually because you can see the signs of slip-shod farming and bags of toxic chemicals laying around. It's sad, actually.
That step, almost from the beginning, required digging a 16 meter deep hole on a piece of land next to their old house where today, unknown to the visitor when arriving, is 3 levels deep and filled with one of the finest and neatest wineries we have ever seen. From the press pad and cuverie, down one level to the barrel storage, and finally to the very bottom for the bottled wine storage, this is the place that Géraldine’s grandparents probably never imagined. The concrete structure, sort of like a giant underground parking garage, and finished in 2014, is neat, clean, and perfect. Production is about 50,000 bottles of wine a year, and a great deal of that has remained in stock, pointing to one of the deepest reserves from among any of the wineries we work with.
Lacourte-Godbillon will be an incredible source of vinotheque bottles in the coming years, but for today, provides a remarkable window into the glories of Écueil, a little slice of heaven in the heart of the Petite Montagne de Reims.