The Guilleminot Difference: Discover Grower Champagne

When buying Champagne, how much are you paying for what is in the bottle – and how much for the name on the label?

The famous grandes marques have done an extraordinary job of making Champagne one of the world's most recognisable luxury products. But look beyond the biggest houses and there is another, increasingly compelling way to buy it: grower Champagne.

These are Champagnes made by the people who actually grow the grapes. Production is typically much smaller, the wines are rooted in a more tightly defined collection of vineyards, and the relationship between grower, place and finished wine is unusually direct. Without the enormous international marketing operations associated with the grandes marques, they can also offer remarkable value for the quality in the bottle.

For wine drinkers interested in provenance, individuality and terroir, that makes grower Champagne well worth discovering.

And Champagne Michel Guilleminot is a particularly good place to start.

Based in Channes in the Côte des Bar, the Guilleminot family has been growing vines here for five generations. Today it farms around 12 hectares divided between just 32 parcels in Channes, Bragelogne and Les Riceys. The family grows the grapes, presses them, makes the wine, ages it, disgorges it and bottles it under its own name.

In short, this is Champagne with an unusually short distance between vineyard and glass.

What Does Grower Champagne Actually Mean?

Look closely at a bottle of Guilleminot and you will find the initials RM: Récoltant-Manipulant.

This is the official designation for a grower who makes and markets Champagne from grapes grown in their own vineyards. It distinguishes producers such as Guilleminot from the traditional négociant-manipulant model associated with many large Champagne houses, which can supplement their own vineyard holdings by buying grapes or wines from growers across the region.

Neither model is inherently a guarantee of quality. The difference is one of scale, sourcing and identity.

With a grower such as Guilleminot, however, the connection is unusually tangible. The same family farms the vines and makes the Champagne; its 12 hectares provide the raw material; and decisions made in those vineyards follow the grapes all the way into the cellar.

That gives the wines a strong sense of producer and place. Rather than seeking the enormous consistency of a globally recognised house style assembled from fruit sourced across Champagne, growers have the opportunity to express the character of a much smaller viticultural footprint.

And there can be another attraction: price.

The world's great Champagne houses maintain global brands, extensive distribution networks and formidable marketing budgets. Small growers operate on a very different scale. That does not automatically make their Champagne inexpensive, but it can mean that considerably more modest prices buy wines involving estate-grown fruit, small-scale production and lengthy cellar ageing.

Guilleminot illustrates the point particularly well: serious, family-made Champagne with genuine provenance, without the price premium inevitably attached to some of Champagne's most famous names.

Guilleminot: Terroir, Pinot Noir and the Côte des Bar

The Côte des Bar lies in Champagne's southern reaches, considerably closer to Chablis than to Reims. It is an area particularly well suited to Pinot Noir – and Guilleminot has made the variety the defining feature of its wines.

The family's vineyards lie on Kimmeridgian limestone, the same geological formation famously encountered in Chablis. Its oldest vines date to 1967, while 32 individual parcels, differing in age and exposure, provide a varied palette of wines from which the family's cuvées can be assembled.

There is another important element to the Guilleminot style: the family chooses not to put its wines through malolactic fermentation. Retaining the wines' natural acidity helps preserve freshness, tension and aromatic definition, balancing the natural breadth and fruit of Pinot Noir.

The result is a remarkably coherent range of 100% Pinot Noir Champagnes – four of which we stock at Mr.Wheeler.

Explore the Guilleminot Range

Guilleminot Brut Tradition
The house signature and a superb introduction to Guilleminot: a 100% Pinot Noir blanc de noirs, aged for a minimum of three years on its lees. Generous, fresh and beautifully balanced – and available from Mr.Wheeler in half-bottles, bottles, magnums and jeroboams.

Guilleminot Brut Rosé
Also 100% Pinot Noir, incorporating a proportion vinified as red Coteaux Champenois by the domaine. Bright strawberry and raspberry fruit combine with the breadth of Pinot Noir and Guilleminot's characteristic freshness.

Guilleminot Prestige
A more complex expression of the house style, incorporating wine from the family's cuvée perpétuelle reserve begun in 2014 and benefiting from extended lees ageing. Richer and deeper, with ripe fruit, honey, brioche and toast.

Guilleminot La Belle Année
The family's vintage expression and the pinnacle of the range. The current 2017 release is made from Pinot Noir grown in Les Riceys and spends at least six years on its lees, producing a beautifully mature Champagne of depth, elegance and freshness.

Five Generations of Champagne Guilleminot

The Guilleminot story stretches back to 1897, when Marie Guilleminot cultivated the family's vines. Her daughter Suzanne continued the tradition with her husband Henri, followed by Colette and Michel, who made the decisive choice to concentrate exclusively on Pinot Noir.

Today the fourth and fifth generations continue that work, combining modern winemaking with a remarkably consistent family philosophy.

Even the angel that appears on every Guilleminot label is part of that history. Originally created by the family's stonemason great-grandfather, it became the emblem of the domaine – a symbol of protection over the family and its vineyards.

For us at Mr.Wheeler Wine, Guilleminot encapsulates much of what makes grower Champagne so compelling: estate-grown fruit, a strong sense of place, small-scale production and a recognisable house style handed down from one generation to the next.

The grandes marques will always have their place. But if you are accustomed to choosing Champagne principally by famous name, Guilleminot offers a persuasive reason to look beyond the label – and discover just how much character and quality an independent grower can put into the bottle.