You can’t get good champagne without good wine, and you need nice grapes
to have a chance to make it. You have to grow well, feed, protect your vines,
picking your grapes at the right time all that depending on climate and you
have to take decision with a 50 % random forecast over 5 days. You need scientific
knowledges when every things go well and lot of experience when things go
upside-down. Apart your decisions consequences. Bad treated pickers, can spoil
one year of hard work but dirty machine or pipes, dysfunctional devices, or
0,10 € saving on cork as well. Have you heard about AMDEC, Kaizen, 5S, CSR
(corporate Social Responsibility), sustainable development? It come from
industry and ROGER BRUN press house was the first ISO 9000 and 14000 certificated
in champagne.
‑Thanks to Philippe return.
Philippe BRUN
Aÿ had vineyards as far as history knows. So the BRUN family. But since Napoleon all children have the same share, so cousins, uncles, aunts are frequently vineyards neighbors… We now run 60 parcels mostly in the historic UNESCO classified vineyards around Aÿ. 2 hectares are Grand CRU, 4,5 are Premier cru, and le last 0,5 ha are from south of Epernay (Monthelon/Mancy) because Philippe’s mother is native from there. It is difficult to manage such a patchwork but it limits climate risks and we have a bigger diversity of Terroirs for our blends. We are natives we know aromas from this spot should be that or the acidity here is higher than there without instrument just because we tasted it long time ago we call it experience.
Everything start in the vineyards ! « Vineyards are like my children, i don’t want to see them suffering, but they have to make effort, but if they are sick I will call doctors and not a shaman and they will get antibiotics if necessary only » We only use organic compost to feed our soil because we want the roots to find food deeper to get terroir taste. Chemical fertilizer were banned long time ago by Roger who didn’t want to do « hydroponic growing ». We prefer a living soil with flowers and wild life so we didn’t use any insecticides since 2002 and reduced of use of herbicides by 95%. I don’t want using copper to protect worms and bacteria in my soil to keep it alive to degrade organic matter and maintain biodiversity, so I use chemical fungicides when necessary. We love our vines here, we played in as child, we had first “rendezvous’” as teen, now we work in, we eat grapes. We are not crazy ! We do not want to poison ourselves and we know we do not own the land but we rent it from next generation and we will have to give them back.
Philippe BRUN