IN THEIR COMPANY
How I came across Champagne Guiborat
This one is worth telling properly. Sometimes a wine finds you before you find it. Arthur Robert and I have been friends since 2009, when we were both studying hospitality at Vatel in Lyon, where I also met the woman who would become my wife. Arthur was one of my best men, and that alone tells you what kind of friendship this is. In the years since, he has built a career that has taken him from wine bars in Lyon and Paris to Singapore, from co-hosting an Australian television series on wine to heading up the Horeca segment at Caves Legrand, one of Paris’s most respected wine merchants. It is a life lived in wine, driven by genuine curiosity and an instinct for both bottles and people.
It was through his work at Legrand that Arthur first encountered Guiborat. He became one of their ambassadors in Paris, placing the wines with the sommeliers and restaurateurs who matter. So when he poured me my first glass of Prohibition on 10 July 2022, it meant something.
My wife and I, who had married just eight days earlier, were in Lardiers, in Provence, with a group of our closest friends, gathered in a farmhouse surrounded by lavender fields for a week of post-wedding celebrations. Arthur opened the bottle without ceremony, as he so often does, and said nothing much, which if you know Arthur, means he wanted to let the wine do the talking. The label alone stopped the conversation: a mock newspaper front page, “Champagne News, Prohibition, Meunier is Still Alive!” This zero-dosage wine was luminous, barely pink, almost oeil de perdrix, with mineral freshness, real tension, and the kind of finish that made me reach for a second glass.
I did not taste Guiborat again for three years, as the wines were simply not available in the UK. But last autumn, as I was making plans to set up on my own after leading the buying department of a large fine wine merchant for just over ten years, Arthur was characteristically direct: “You need to meet Karine and Richard,” he said. “They have never had anyone in the UK and I think you would be a good match.”
My first visit to the domaine came in early January 2026, a month after the birth of my son. We had travelled from London to my wife’s family in Puligny-Montrachet, and while she and her parents looked after our little Charles, I set off for Champagne: my first business trip for my own business, the first chapter of something entirely new.
There was a small mix-up on arrival as they were expecting me an hour later, and so I found myself standing with Richard Fouquet in the winery for over an hour before the formal visit began, just talking. About his vines, his philosophy, his grandmother’s cellar dug by hand, his conviction that terroir speaks most clearly when the winemaker steps back. He is a man of few words, but the words he chooses carry weight.
The balance between them is immediately apparent, and it is the same balance you find in the wines.
Karine, his wife and oenological partner, brings warmth and precision in equal measure.
Three hours later, as I was booking a taxi back to Aÿ, they asked if I had time for lunch. I said yes without hesitation. We set off to the Café du Centre in Cramant, a small unassuming bistro full of regulars who all know each other. Richard and Karine greeted their way around the restaurant while I ordered pâté en croûte and steak frites and felt, for the first time in Champagne, entirely at home. I left thinking I had found something I had been looking for without knowing it.
It is a privilege to be the first to bring the Guiborat wines to the UK, from 2026. These are wines that have come to me through friendship and a glass poured at a wedding celebration in a field of lavender. I hope you taste it.
GET IN TOUCH
Talk to us about allocations, listings, or the wines themselves.
Trade
For sommeliers, restaurants,
hotels and merchants.
Allocations, pricing and
account opening.
About
Who’s behind Terroirs, and
how the portfolio is built.
Contact
Have a question?
We'd love to hear from you.
↑
☰