In Champagne’s cellars, prestige vintages, wines, and spirits slumber in wooden barrels, kegs, and casks, mostly from the Tonnellerie de Champagne. This adventure in craftsmanship began in 1998 in Cauroy-lès-Hermonville at the initiative of Jérôme Viard, a carpenter’s son and oenologist by trade, and Denis Saint Arroman, a cooper consecrated as a “Meilleur Ouvrier de France”. Their philosophy? To embody a perfect balance between respect for traditions, French production, and technical innovation. A challenge won, enabling the cooperage – the last in activity in north-eastern France – to become an “Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant”.

Here, each cask is made of wood from France’s finest forests, meticulously selected depending on its type, drying in the open air for several years, cut, heated respecting precise parameters for temperature, humidity, and duration, then left to rest. Thanks to this age-old know-how, these wooden containers, vital to the vinification process, allow wines to reveal and develop their entire aromatic palette. Finely-tuned gestures also allow for customized creations: designer tables and chairs, cases, glass-holders, original seals… Today, the Tonnellerie de Champagne opens its workshops to all experts, wine-lovers, and the curious, a chance for immersion in this ancestral art, discovery of its best-kept secrets, but also initiation in the tasting of champagnes vinified in barrels.