GOSSET: A Family of Discretion

Last month, I went on a hospitality tour at the generous invitation of Gosset Champagne's Director of Hospitality, Nathalie Dufour.

We'd been talking for nearly an hour when the conversation pivoted to the word transmission and how important it is in French culture. I mentioned earlier that I unwittingly learned about transmission and stewardship at the hands of my beloved grandmother and mother through dress-making, decades before I became a sales advisor at CHANEL.

Visiting the caves was an exploration in world history — markings from people who took refuge there during WWII and of some employees of GOSSET who used to work for the house. It is a tradition in French architecture that the workmen sign and date their names so I was not surprised to see them.

What I was not expecting to see was the French spelling of my grandmother's maiden name: PARRISE or PARRIS in English — a family name that has drifted across countries and continents — Guyana, the UK, the US.

There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, that can prepare you for spotting the French spelling of your maternal grandmother's maiden name scratched into the wall of a cave 200 meters below the ground of the unruffled city of Epernay.

Surnames are their own form of transmission.

Founded in 1584, Gosset Champagne was at first the personal wine exclusively for the Gosset family. Jean Gosset started producing wine in 1484, enjoyed by the family, and it became a business in 1584, or in the words of Nathalie — Gosset was around before Christopher Columbus allegedly discovered the United States (another essay for another time).

It is the oldest wine producer in the Champagne region.

The family stayed at the helm until the mid 1990s when the Cointreau family, who also make Cognac Frapin, acquired Gosset in 1994. This decision was made with serious consideration of the future of the champagne house after being with the family for 16 generations.

Between 1994 and 2006, Beatrice Cointreau of the Cointreau family led the house, where she developed the Celebris Cuvée and the production of Gosset grew to 1 million bottles. Also under Beatrice's leadership, cave master Odilon de Varine began to work alongside then Chef de Cave, Jean-Pierre Mareigner for a decade to ensure the transmission of the wine would be the same quality and register. Odilon officially took over as the Chef de Cave in 2016.

The leadership shifted once again in 2007, this time Beatrice's brother Jean-Pierre Cointreau took over and the expansion of Gosset under his management led to its current park-like estate in Epernay at the former home of Jeanmaire Champagne in 2009.

Experiencing the caves was a revelation once I got over the sheer length of the stairwell, its steep descent, and the calm chilly air that surrounds you as you step lower and lower into the ground. You are keenly aware how deep you are below the streets — and the magisterial planning of the cave was a lesson in design.

I learned about the assemblage — base wines from different plots that are tasted and blended, using black bottling so the tasters can assess based on the aroma and structure, not on the color; the "babies" are wines from last year's bottling who lay resting quietly while the second fermentation and aging on the lees does its magic.

Then comes remuage — aka riddling — where the gradual turning of each bottle of wine moves the dead yeast down to the neck of the bottle for preparation for eventual removal.

It was during our exploration of the pallets that I spotted the graffiti of a WWII American soldier that brought tears to both my eyes and Nathalie's as she shared the story. Alongside the multiple wartime graffiti markings on the wall was the name and a place —

Connecticut, December 1944.

Nathalie shared that at first, it was clear that the marking was written by an American soldier, but for years, that was all anyone knew. Then in 2023, Nathalie was hosting a small group of champagne enthusiasts from New Orleans. One of her guests, a man named Brian, mentioned that New Orleans is home to a major museum dedicated to WWII. It turned out that Brian's friend runs the museum, and he offered to search the soldier's name in the museum's database.

It was there that they learned that the soldier's first name was Frank. He'd been a bomb disposal specialist in the American Army, and he was present in the area during the Allied advance through France in August 1944. After surviving the war, Frank returned home to Connecticut where he studied on the GI Bill, became an engineer, and had three sons. He died at a relatively young age, in 1958.

The impact of WWII had a huge impact on the leadership at Gosset. Madame Suzanne Gosset took over while her husband was away at war while raising their children at the same time. When her husband returned, she stayed active in the day-to-day running of the house alongside him. After he passed away, she became president of Gosset in her own right, holding the role for ten years, 1955 to 1965.

Madame Gosset also had a passion for rosé champagne. When developing the house's own rosé, she pushed back on the convention of dark bottles arguing that beautiful champagne should be fresh, elegant and visual, not hidden in a dark bottle. Madame Gosset's became the first in Champagne to sell rosé in a clear bottle.

Suzanne's role as directrice of a house in the Champagne region is part of a long tradition of widows taking over houses after war, such as Madame Pommery or Veuve Clicquot. It became clear to me that a pattern emerged during those years: women at the head of Champagne houses during times of war created fearless female leaders.

I left Gosset reflecting on how we are all walking accumulations of transmission, of terroir, of register. And to be so graciously hosted — in the truest sense of the word — by Nathalie and the Gosset Champagne team was a reminder that what we might translate as a special form of celebration is their every day. How lucky they are to spend their days, sharing their stories with the world through champagne.

425 years of transmission in a beautiful bottle. What could be better?

xxx LPK