On Trunk Terroir

Looking at an extraordinary partnership between Champagne Henri Giraud and the Tonnellerie de Champagne

Decanter’s August magazine issue will feature an article on oak in Champagne. Look out for a history of barrel usage, insight from some of the most experienced hands in the region and a selection of twenty wines to taste. As part of the research for this piece I spoke to Sebastian Le Golvet of Champagne Henri Giraud in Aÿ. A few weeks later I found myself up in the Argonne forest to discover a unique and long-running collaboration with Champagne’s only remaining commercial barrel-manufacturer - the Tonnellerie de Champagne.

Argonne 2015 with the ‘Giraut’ oak in the background

We take ten paces. Sebastien Le Golvet stops. “You see how the smell has changed?” As we move from the barn where the ‘raw’ oak is split to the unceremonious forecourt where the barrels are toasted, the air shifts in tone from what Henri Giraud’s cellar master terms ‘oaky’ - sweet, like jasmine, butter, vanilla - to something finer: crusty bread and nuts, licks of spice.

Giraud is more than just a client at the Tonnellerie. Together, Le Golvet and master barrel maker Jérôme Viard are marking the eighth year of a remarkable project to map, trace and ultimately put to best use the ancient sessile oak of Champagne’s closest oak forest: the Argonne.

‘Just as Champagne is an accident of history, so is the Argonne’, explains Le Golvet. When the Paris basin sunk, pushing up the Cretaceous chalk deposits that form the undulating falaises of la Champagne viticole, its edges were forced up against Alsace’s Vosges mountains, revealing a layer of unusual silicious soil called Gaize.

Here, we enter a parallel universe, one of familiar subject but unfamiliar object: oak terroir.

Soil map of the Châtrices area of the Argonne forest.

Oak Terroir

Dating back 100 million years (older than the Cretaceous chalk of Champagne), Gaize is hard, slow going for the forest’s ancient oak. In summer it is brittle and unyielding to roots, in winter almost sandy. Slow growth means tighter rings, tighter grain and ultimately less oxygen ingress into the wines - something desirable for long-aged champagnes. The Argonne also holds plenty of clay-rich topsoils too, though, the oak here faster-growing, and more ‘open’ in profile. Comparisons with the chalk/clay dynamic of some of Champagne’s vineyards are hard to avoid.

We drive for about an hour East of Reims, through sleepy villages such as the picturesque Sainte-Menehould, birthplace of Dom Pérignon. “It’s easy to get lost here”, says Le Golvet, who takes his family cycling down the pristine white tracks that run through the forest. As we reach the commune of Hauts-Bâtis, home of the celebrated Giraut oak (no relation), supposedly personally selected for protection by Napoleon, Le Golvet explains that the sessile oak can reach eight hundred years of age.

It’s not a case, though, of tonnellieries turning up with chainsaws and taking what they fancy. The National Office of Forestry ‘offers’ up certain trees to each year, which Le Golvet and Viard inspect. These are usually ‘coupes d’amélioration’, cuts made to manage space in the forest rather than clearances, often around one hundred years old (although some can be much older).

The Gaize soil, revealed in an old World War one trench next to one of Giraud’s new oak plantations.

A bottle of Argonne 2015 is pulled out of the car, just as a jolly band of retiree-randonneurs wanders into the peaceful clearing where the Giraut oak stands tall. They make their amusement known at the sight of three gentlemen in smart shirts (and socks tucked-into-trousers to fend of ticks), sitting with oversized glassware at a picnic table.

Argonne is made entirely in new oak from this forest. “There is a special marriage between the Argonne and Pinot Noir from Aÿ”, Le Golvet believes. “I don’t think Pinot from Ambonnay, or Bouzy, or the North of the Montagne de Reims would be able to take new oak so well.” It’s a sentiment that seems to make sense - there’s a hungry, searching sort of power to good Aÿ fruit, yellow and golden in flavour rather than red-berry-rich or cool-school mineral like the classic Southern and Northern villages of the Montagne.

It’s a huge champagne, but comfortable in its skin. The aromas are golden-ripe, all apricot and chocolate-orange, bitter almond and chestnut honey. It’s immensely mouth-filling, expansive stuff, but without either the aggression of many 2015s or the ‘raw’ oakiness of some Champagnes that boast even small amounts of new oak. The hikers would, I suspect, be startled if there had been enough left to pour them a sip.

Making champagne from specific new oak barrels every year is not straightforward, though. 'In 2021 we weren’t offered any trees”, Le Golvet explains. “There just weren’t any ready.” Giraud operate a ‘reserve’ system for this eventuality, meaning that the wines that rely on new oak can still be made with their own barrels even when no oak is on offer. Something learnt, perhaps, from the very similar reserve systems employed in the cellars of Champagne houses.

“There’s nobody else who works like this”, explained Viard back at the Tonnellerie. “It is completely unique”. You can see why; starting with the ageing of the oak staves in the yard, every piece is stamped with a code that links it back to a single geo-localised tree (and hence a precise region, soil type and age), the aspect of the slope, and, importantly, where in the trunk it comes from. “We have different ‘floors’ in the oak - the ground floor just above the roots, and then all the way up to the fourth floor beneath the branches at the top”, Le Golvet explains. Every finished barrel, then, is completely traceable, and can be toasted - and filled - with precision.

Does such detail actually make a difference? The first test is in the toasting. Facing us are three freshly-assembled barrels, ends not yet attached, sitting on top of small fires about the size of a stock pot. It’s a far cry from the sort of toasting seen elsewhere, with roaring flames, dark colours and a degree of industriousness. This is slow-cooking, Texas barbecue rather than Turkish Mangal.

“We need to go very, very slowly in order to extract the tannins from the oak”, Le Golvet points out, keen to emphasise that he doesn’t want grip and structure, harmful to Champagne’s elegance, to seep into the wine. “A normal toasting might take half an hour, forty five minutes…here it takes an hour and a half, maybe two, maybe more”. As the kindling crackles, small pools of bitter liquid pool on the surface of the oak, containing some of the tannins in question. We lick our fingers and taste a little - bitter, oily:

Le Golvet explaining the slow toast (in French)

Cooked to order

Finally, Viard lifts the barrels from the fires. There are three, all from different parts of the Argonne; the first from La Chalade, the second from Châtrice and one from Haut Batîs. All three have seen exactly the same ageing process, the same construction, the same length of time on the fire; it’s a horizontal tasting, tree by tree. Number one is instantly appealing - it smells like apricots and crusty bread, inviting and complex. Number two, from Châtrice, is more reserved, drier, more woody if that makes any sense at all - dry spices, perhaps some black fruit. Number three is a friendly character, with a delicious milk chocolate creaminess in the aroma.

Le Golvet becomes animated. Number one, I sense, is the sort of thing he’s after. Number three, it transpires, is from a part of the forest with more clay and less Gaize, meaning faster growing trees and little looser grain; it’s friendly, with that creamy, chocolate aroma, but perhaps not as fine. Number two is discreet and complex, but not ready yet. All three go back on the fire.

After another fifteen minutes, number one is exactly where Le Golvet wants it. 'When it smells like mirabelle, like apricot tart, it’s ready”, he says. Number two is still a little mute, but more expressive now. Number three, however, has decided to go all ‘lactic’ - that milk chocolate has become almost powdered-milk creamy, milkshake like.

The solution? More time.

Another ten minutes on, and number three has undergone another transformation. That milky, lactic side has quietened down, and the chocolate is not just sweet but nutty, like praline. It’s more interesting, with more ‘tension’, Le Golvet feels. Number two has remained quiet, tight, subtle. "These kind are good too, when we have a very ripe vintage,’ he explains, pointing out that the character of the barrel can be used to counterbalance the character of the juice that year. For this reason the toasting is normally undertaken just before harvest, when he can get a sense of what the year might bring.

A barrel in the cellar displaying its fully-traced heritage

The barrels complete, it’s then back to the cellar, where 2022’s base wines are still resting awaiting tirage. We taste some wines to be included in Argonne 2022, starting with the exact same wine - an Aÿ Pinot Noir from the Froides Terres lieu-dit, all from the same pressload - vinified in neutral concrete, then four different barrels, two of which are from different sections of the same tree.

There’s more suppleness and smoothness in a barrel from La Chalade than in one from Beaulieu. The most interesting comparison, though, is between a barrel made from the bottom of a tree in Châtrices, and one from the top; the ‘level 0’, or ground floor wine, feels more raw and open, whereas the barrel from the top retains more primary aromas and freshness - pears, a touch of ester character still, citric and rich with fresh butter. More controlled, more precise; as large a difference as we tasted from entirely different trees.

A Personal Challenge

The complete lineup at the Manoir Henri Giraud in Aÿ

It’s at this point that I must make a confession: it was an Henri Giraud champagne that prompted my first explorations into the region twelve years ago. But not, in truth, because I loved it. In fact I didn’t understand it at all. I wasn’t expecting the weight, the power, or the embrace of oak. I had to find out why this wine tasted so different.

Today the wines remain some of Champagne’s most singular characters, although it must be said that the current lineup is the product of a notable level of refinement over the years. Most of all, Giraud is a fine example of why context and story matter, and why the word ‘champagne’ needn’t kick off a set of preconceptions about how something should taste. A story doesn’t excuse an unbalanced or poor wine, of course, but with wines like Le Golvet’s it pays to understand the ethos.

In Aÿ that evening, our affable driver Ebby turned out to be a chef that drives rather than a driver who cooks. As he prepared a few dishes to accompany the whole portfolio it was the mid-tier Hommage à Pinot Noir that kept on calling from the glass. It seemed to find a certain sweet spot, between weight of fruit, amplification of oak and gentle oxidative breadth. Blanc de Blancs was good, if not a little more of a curio at this house made of Pinot Noir, whereas a fabulous Coteaux Rouge from Aÿ in 2019 threatened to steal the whole show.

There’s no doubt that Argonne 2015 is the purest, no-holds-barred expression of what Giraud is all about. It may be a challenging champagne for some, intriguing for a good many and transcendent for others. I certainly left with my radar somewhat adjusted, sensing more than a few cracks in my preconceptions about champagne and new oak.

Ultimately, despite the astute branding these wines are a case of original, authentic substance rather than self-conscious stylising. For anyone wanting to reach for the bookends on Champagne’s wide shelf of flavour they remain essential.