Champagne Dom Caudron, Passy-Grigny, France

I took a wine tasting tour in the Champagne Dom Caudron in Passy-Grigny, a village in the Marne Valley of the Champagne wine region in north-east France.

The village of 320 inhabitants – grape growers – joined together to form a cooperative after the priest Aimé Caudron gave them the idea, because the families alone could not affort the expensive wine-making equipment. The priest was an iconic epicurean and vine-growing figure in the village. And so, the cooperative was formed in 1929 with 23 vine growers – making champagne from entirely Meunier grapes.

The first vineyard covered 12 hectares, and it is now more than 130 hectares on the Marne Valley hillsides with more than 60 vine growers.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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