IN THE CELLAR
Winemaking at Champagne Guiborat
This is where the Guiborat style is really made. Richard blocks the malolactic, so nothing rounds off the edge the chalk gives the wine. Each parcel is kept apart and fermented in its own small tank. Oak barely features, just three foudres in the whole cellar. And the wines age slowly underground, in the family’s chalk cellar.
Transparency, Tension and Chalk
The winemaking at Guiborat is built on a foundation of non-intervention and deliberate simplicity. Simplicity here comes from deep understanding, not from minimalism for its own sake. Richard’s approach reflects a conviction that the best Champagne is one in which the chalk, the vine, and the vintage speak for themselves; the winemaker’s role is to avoid getting in the way.
Pressing
Richard uses a pneumatic press (with an approximate capacity of 8,000 kg) rather than a Coquard press for several reasons. When he arrived, the old vertical presses were no longer in place, and replacing modern equipment with older-style presses wasn’t a practical option. The principal constraint is height: the cellar simply doesn’t have sufficient ceiling clearance to accommodate a Coquard, and raising the roof would be prohibitively expensive. Hygiene is another important consideration, as wood is considerably more difficult to clean thoroughly, and cleanliness is fundamental to their style of winemaking. A pneumatic press also offers a high degree of precision. A return to vertical pressing may come in time, but it isn’t on the immediate horizon.
He has progressively reduced the intensity of his pressings over the years. For Chardonnay, whose thick skins can be resistant to extraction, he has shifted from extracting 100 litres per 150 kg of grapes to 102 litres per 160 kg.
The direction of change is toward less extraction, not more: he wants only the finest, most mineral juice, not volume. Richard uses only the free-run juice and first press (cuvée) for most of the wines, while the taille is only used for the Téthys bottling, where full malolactic fermentation adds breadth to the wine. Otherwise, later press fractions are discarded.
Fermentation
Primary fermentation takes place in small, stainless-steel tanks, one per parcel, allowing a granular, plot-by-plot assessment of each harvest before blending decisions are taken. A local Cramant/Ambonnay yeast selection is used: Richard has found that indigenous fermentation is too uncertain and too slow in the context of his non-malo winemaking, where speed of fermentation is a tool for managing stability and avoiding spoilage risk. Sulphur additions are kept to an absolute minimum (maximum 50 mg) throughout.
Malolactic Fermentation: the Central Decision
The single most important technical decision at Guiborat, and the one that most clearly defines its wines, is the consistent blocking of malolactic fermentation (MLF) across almost all their cuvées (Prisme, De Caurés à Mont-Aigu and Prohibition). Their entry-level wine Téthys is the one exception, the only cuvée integrating tailles alongside cuvée (first press) and seeing full MLF, providing a rounder texture and making it more approachable in youth.
“One of Cramant’s top growers [Guiborat] has an innovative approach to entry level, using the tailles – the later pressings – of Chardonnay to add some fruitiness and charm to their otherwise laser-bright style, and allowing malolactic fermentation to soften the palate a little.”
Tom Hewson, Decanter (March 2024)
This is a conscious choice. Without the softening effect of malolactic, every technical decision in the cellar carries more risk. Richard is explicit about this: the wines are lightly sulphured at harvest precisely because no malo means there is no margin for error, unblocked malo in a low-sulphur wine can spiral badly. The payoff is wines of extraordinary vertical intensity: the natural malic acid is preserved, producing the electric, saline, focused character that has become Guiborat’s hallmark. Richard articulated his position clearly when he described the combination of chalk terroir, Chardonnay, no MLF, and old vines as his “combo magique”: the formula that underpins everything he makes.
Elevage
Oak is used sparingly. Just three 400-litre foudres exist in the entire cellar, an astonishing restraint for an estate of this ambition. One is used for the Mardeuil Meunier (Prohibition sees a small oak component); one for the taille component of De Caurés à Mont-Aigu that enters the Téthys cuvée; and one for a small experimental cuvée still in development. For the rest of the range, stainless steel is the vessel of choice. Richard is emphatic on oak: its presence in the mouth masks the terroir’s natural aromatic expression, and in wines of this precision, that is a price he refuses to pay.
After primary fermentation, wines rest on their lees until February or March of the following year, before blending and tirage (bottling for secondary fermentation). Tirage takes place in March, timed carefully to maintain cellar temperatures around 13°C, achieved through the naturally cool chalk cellars and the use of large doors to draw in cold air. This temperature control is critical for consistent secondary fermentation in a no-malo context.
The wines then age sur lattes in the chalk cellar, the same cellar his grandmother had completed by hand, for periods ranging from a minimum of 24 months for Téthys to 72 months or more for the other cuvées. Disgorgement only happens in winter, with a minimum six months’ post-disgorgement ageing observed before release. Dosage is kept between 0 and 2.5 g/L across the range, extra-brut by category and often closer to brut nature in practice.
Téthys depends on reserve wine, and since 2020 it is the only non-vintage cuvée. Richard’s solera-style reserve is built from successive vintages: 50% of the current reserve wine is N-1, 25% N-2, 12.5% N-3, and so on, extending back seven or more years. This depth of reserves, in the hands of a producer who has been working at the same level for nearly three decades, gives the non-vintage cuvée an extra dimension of complexity that vintage wines rarely achieve.
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