The video follows host Speaker A on a journey to the Champagne Grémillet estate in the southern Côte des Bars, where they meet winemaker Anne Grémillet. The episode explains the distinction between grower‑produced and négociant champagnes, then tours the steep 6‑hectare vineyard used for red wine and a historic 2‑hectare clos. An export arboretum displays trees representing the estate’s global markets. The production process is detailed: grape sorting, first‑press selection using 8,000 kg and 4,000 kg presses, separation of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Meunier, and the importance of the first press for quality. The host observes bottle handling, yeast settlement, and the mandatory lees aging (15–24 months up to 10 years). Modern equipment such as a massive gyropalette automates riddling, while traditional cork preparation ensures pressure retention. Historical context is provided through a discussion of phylloxera and the Marne‑Aube regional politics that shaped Champagne’s boundaries. The cellar tour showcases barrel‑aged Chardonnay (cuvée Évidence) and a museum of old riddling racks. Finally, a guided tasting walks through the estate’s portfolio—from zero‑dosage brut to Blanc de Blancs, Blanc de Noirs, rosé, vintage 2017, barrel‑aged Chardonnay, and a small organic Clos—highlighting terroir, blending practices, and the estate’s commitment to organic production. The video ends with a call to action for viewers to like, subscribe, and follow future wine adventures.
Chapters
We're going to Champagne! Actually, we are going to the south in Côte d'Ivoire to go visit Champagne-Grémoulaye. We are just driving fast on a French highway about 2 hours to the southernmost reaches of Champagne. Quick detour En route for some beautiful sunflowers as we head down to drink some champagne at 10 in the morning. This is gorgeous. So we're in the region of Aves. This is where the Côte de Bars is, and you'll find a lot more grower champagnes here. Champagne kind of works in two main ways. We have négociants who literally buy juice from grapes. They'll go to vineyards, they'll see which vineyards they want, and they'll buy that so that they can do their production from somebody else that's growing it. Grower champagnes literally means that the person who's making the champagne is growing the champagne as well, and you find a lot more of those down here. Go, birdie! In this video, we're heading to the incredible Champagne Grémillet. I'll be meeting with Anne Grémillet to uncover the secrets of their winemaking, from their historic cellars to modern techniques. We'll explore the grounds, learn a bit about their unique aging process on the lees, and finish with a guided tasting of some of their most celebrated champagnes.
And over there is 6 hectares belonging to us. And this vineyard, nobody wanted it because it's quite difficult to work in it. Yeah, it's very steep, you know, like 45%, quite dangerous. So we decided to buy it anyway, and today it's one of the best vineyards we have, very good exposition, etc. So we keep it especially for the red wine, for making red wine.
That's fabulous. It's amazing. Okay, let's go.
There is also the one from my brother. We already own one part of this vineyard. So it's about 2 hectares now, quite a big clos because actually about 35 clos in Champagne, only 10 of them are more than 1 hectare.
It's all open, you could just sit in the vineyard. Look at that, it's so cute. We wish we could have stayed. So for every place that they export to, they have a different tree representing presenting it in this arboretum include— this one's from Greece, and they're all from different areas.
This one's from North America.
It's a hotel for like bees and everything. This way they can keep the flora and fauna up to snuff. Insect hotel. Wow, it's like all over, all the way up and over.
And we also have this globe made especially for us. Yeah, made of different kind of wood. So from here, I think so. I'm pretty sure, but it represents, you know, because we start with the export before the national market. So, okay, it's like, you know, it's a mix between biodiversity and exports and around the world.
Yeah, that's really cool. I know it's your favorite place. And you see here, they're cold. They come out, it's all frozen. See the steam coming off? And then he's disgorging it, he's shaking it off. So now at this stage, they're adding in— you see the wine at the top— filling the bottles because they lost that amount of wine. Also, we're adding in any sweetness that they need before it gets to the ship. And then they go over there to get it clean. So this is This is the press machine where they'll use right after harvest. They come into this press area. This will all be transformed completely because what they'll do is the grapes will come up and they actually start up at the top. They start up there and they go into the press and then they gravity flow down to the bottom and that's where the juice will go.
So here we've got two 8,000 kilos machine, over there is a 4,000 kilos, and we've got another press center in Lirizé. Same capacity. So 4,000 kilos in Champagne is called a mare. It will give 25.50 hectoliters of juice, and we are going to keep only the very first press. So the big one is called the cuvée. This is the one we're going to vinify. The rest goes to distillery. We won't keep them. It's quite an important quality criteria because it will give better aging wine. It has also a cost because we need to cut more grapes each time to always to the best.
So you want to get that first press so this way you get the best wine that goes into the bottle.
So we separate, of course, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
They're all empty right now because harvest is yet to happen. So the reason why they're in these black bags is because they're bottles that don't need as much sunlight on them. So while they have light for the room that's very low, the bags also add extra protection. So when those bottles are upside down, that means they're still going through the process. When they're upside down, the the yeast is heading to the bottom of the bottle so that this way you can get it ready to go through that system and get the disgorgement, disgorging the yeast and making it ready to be a final wine.
I will show you the step before that.
See, this is the yeast that's helping with that second fermentation, and then over time they're kind of flipping it onto its head so all the yeast ends up here so they can get it out.
Can you see?
Yeah.
So we have to keep it at least 50 15 months. For most of the— well, all the cuvées, we have a bit longer aging. The minimum is 24 months for the entry level until 10 years for our Clos Rocher. This yeast will give the complexity to the wine. It's what we have to do according to the rules, you know.
15 months minimum, but they do 24 up to 10 years depending on the cuvée, depending on where the vineyards are from, depending on what they're trying to make in the end. So this is going in for 10 years, and they've been here for so long because you can see like how dirty the bottles are. But they'll stay like this until the complexity has been added from that lees aging. This thing is really cool. So this is the gyropalette, but it's a massive gyropalette. And what it does is it takes those bottles that have the yeast in it and they start in different levels and they slowly move it downwards. So over time you'll see like they're at different levels of spinning, and that's getting the yeast down to the bottom of the bottle. And this is how they're doing the process of getting everything, all the yeast down, so that it could then go go through that bottling process and then it'll get labels on it and then we can open it and then we can drink it. The rosé gets to this deposit, that's the yeast. This is the yeast that helps with the second fermentation and then when it's on its side it's helping with lees aging, which is adding that nuttiness and complexity and all of that and then they have to get rid of it because it's really chunky and you don't want to drink it as much. That large riddler over there, the gyropalette, that replaced this where they would literally like pick up the bottle and turn it and they would move the bottles up. So that would get the yeast to the bottom of the bottle. And the corks, they start off like this. This is how a champagne cork starts. And then it gets squished and put in the bottle, and after it makes the mushroom on top. They need the fatter cork because it's a sparkling wine, so it pushes out to stop the atmospheres of pressure from leaking outward. So it starts, it comes off, you get the foil on the top, and then it goes through here. The bottles go through a system this way. They get their front label, they get turned, they get this label, and then they They come out as they go over here and somebody's ready to put them into a box. And then they're off and onto a pallet and then they go somewhere else in the world. So these are the old grape picking baskets and you can see on the side there's like a backpack strap on the bottom there. You would pick and then you'd bend over and throw them into a vat. These are other grape picking baskets. Again, everything has changed over time. This would have been a barrel moving machine previously, an old press.
Who knows what's true. After Luxembourg, there wasn't any vineyard anywhere in Europe. When we wanted to plant again, the Marne Valley didn't want the Aube Valley. The people from the Aube and the Basque make the revolution. So they used this tool, which is usually used for— it's like a weapon, you know? It's a revolution and it's a rice.
So phylloxera happened, which is a little tiny bug that destroyed the wine world in Europe. And after that happened, Champagne went through revolution where, as she was saying, the people in the Vallée du Marne didn't want the Côte de Bars down here, the wineries down here, to be part of the region of Champagne. So that, that little backhoe up there, is a symbol that's that kind of represents that. While it's a symbol of farming, this was also the tool that they were threatening to be part of the region with, like this revolution of getting the whole department of Champagne to be together, so it also includes the valley down here. And down the stairs and into some other really great rooms. Now we have the barrel cellar, some more old riddling racks. So this is the same as before, the riddling racks, but now they're used as a decoration down here. And we have some barrels that are going through the aging process. So they have a library that goes back to 2003 till now, so you can see the vineyards from there. Oh, I had your 2008, so that would have been one of the first 5 years of the winery.
That's so cool. So we only have one cuvée made in here. This is cuvée Évidence, 100% of Chardonnay. And where's the fermentation take place? In barrels. 6 months ago.
So this is going to add more like richness, intensity, and generosity to the wine.
We don't use them at all, it's only water. It's just to show how it was.
So this is a museum aspect, it's showcasing what the winery was like, what this region was like when they were using riddling racks. All of them are only filled with water, unfortunately. Showcases how the riddling racks would have been used, and somebody would have come, they would have picked up the bottle turned it, put it down so that they would have got the yeast to the bottom of the neck.
Nowadays there is no interest, so I know sometimes you can see—
this is so much work.
Yeah, when you— yeah, it's too much work and it's too long, you know, 3 weeks instead of 5 days or so.
Do you know how much more expensive champagne would be if they kept doing this? At least another like $100, especially in today's money.
It's a blending rosé, so mix of red and white juice. Then we've got the middle range with the zero dosage, Blanc de Blancs and Blanc de Noirs. Here it's mainly about Pinot Noir. We've got a maceration rosé, then we have a vintage 2016 made of Pinot Noir only, and the very new one, so the Clos Rosé, and the very new one is an organic Clos.
And this is the still wine, still red and still rosé.
Black grapes. It could be a mix of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, or only Pinot Meunier. Here it's only Pinot Noir. Blanc de Blancs means white champagnes coming from white grapes. In Champagne, white grapes.
So it's so easy.
It's the same process.
It's white of black and white of white. Exactly.
The only difference here is the grapes. So I will add an extra glass so you can compare.
No reserve wine, just 2017 in the glass. Pinot Noir is our base process here. For this wine, what they'll do is they'll make up to between almost 100 wines from different parcels from different areas. They'll taste all of them and see which is going to go into the vintage. So even though it's 100% Pinot Noir, it's all from 2017, it's still a blended wine from across their vineyards and across the region that they're making wine in.
Very nice terroir for Chardonnay. It's a very nice place.
All right, so there's a full range of wines here and a lot of champagne to get through. The best thing about Grands Millets is that you really get a full aspect of champagne as a region. You can start off with the zero dosage. This is pretty much zero sugar. You're really getting a very terroir-driven, racy aspect of what champagne can do. Then you're gonna go into the Brut. This is the Ambassador. You know, this is a winery that's been around the world multiple times. They're showcasing this region in the glass, and this bottle really showcases that. Then we get into the two grapes that Grenier is getting into. We have the Blanc de Noir, the white of red, and the Blanc de Blanc, the white of white. This really showcases you what Pinot Noir and what Chardonnay does in the glass, where you have something that's more racy and structured versus something that's more pillowy and generous. You can see the two differences within the grapes, where in these to wine through a blend of the two, plus some reserve wine from previous years. Then we get into the vintage. Champagne is a blended region. You get a blend of years, you get a blend of grapes, you get a blend of different areas all together. But in vintage Champagne, you get a snapshot. This is a 2017 snapshot. We're really showcasing exactly what's happening within the year, and it really does give a fabulous view palate, and we get Pinot Noir into this too with extended aging. Then we get into the La Evidente, which is a barrel-aged Chardonnay base, and this is giving that generosity, that pillowy-ness, that beautiful rise out of the glass you can get from Chardonnay. And then we finish with the Forget-Me-Not because you can't forget that there is bio organic wine up in here as well. Even though it's a very small amount, people work very, very hard to make that perfect example of organic wine with this production. Thank you so much for watching this episode. If you enjoyed every moment as much as I did, make sure to pop a like on this video. And if you want to join in on all the fun, make sure to hit that subscribe button and ring the bell so you won't miss a single drop of all future wine adventures. Cheers, everyone!
