IN THE VINEYARD
Farming at Champagne Guiborat
Richard has no certificate and does not want one, but the way he farms would satisfy most people who do. He gave up herbicides and insecticides back in 2011. The grass between the rows is whatever comes up on its own. And the same hands prune the same vines every year, because to his mind that is where the vintage is decided.
Precision without Orthodoxy
Richard Fouquet is a pragmatist. He is not certified organic nor does he claim to be. But the reality of what he does in the vineyard is, in most meaningful ways, indistinguishable from organic viticulture and, in some respects, more thoughtfully considered.
He stopped using herbicides and insecticides altogether in 2011. For mildew and oïdium, he still applies preventive treatments when conditions demand it, typically before flowering, though the approach varies year to year. The philosophy is firmly preventive rather than curative. The reason he isn’t organically certified is straightforward: he feels the soils of Champagne are already over-burdened with copper from decades of conventional treatments, and he doesn’t see the addition of further copper-based remedies as automatically superior. A coherent agronomic position that places soil health above the comfort of a label.
Every surface should carry life.
Soil management is handled entirely through native grasses. Richard has never seeded or planted anything. The ground cover grows wild and is managed with discs to control vigour and, where needed, with a spade to break the grass’s root system and prevent excessive competition with the vines. Bare soil, in Richard’s view, represents an agronomic aberration.
Pruning
The same team returns to the same vines each year.
Pruning is carried out with exceptional rigour. Richard insists on this continuity, believing that a pruner must be able to find and respond to their own cuts from the previous season to achieve optimal sap-flow management. All team members have been trained in taille douce (gentle pruning), a technique designed to minimise the disruption of sap circulation and the introduction of fungal disease through wounds. The workload is significant: Chablis pruning (used on some parcels) requires around 250 hours per hectare, trellis work a further 100 hours, and ébourgeonnage (debudding) around 40 hours. It is a total commitment that places the vineyard, correctly, at the centre of what defines the wines.
Harvest
Richard aims to pick the grapes in mid-September, though the climate is driving this increasingly earlier. Given the diverse expositions of his parcels, including the complex aile de moulin (windmill wing) effect on Les Caurés (where different sections of the same parcel receive opposing solar exposures), he does an unusually large volume of sampling before picking, monitoring each micro-section individually. In his view, cool nights at harvest time are essential for aroma development. Needless to say, everything is handpicked. Selection is handled using the portefeuille (wallet) method: pickers are well remunerated and receive bonuses for selectivity (rather than quantity), understanding that a careful, measured harvest delivers better juice regardless of the additional time required.
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