21/08/2026
Etienne Calsac's family sold grapes to the big houses for years, watching someone else's name go on the bottle. In 2010, at twenty-six, he broke with that: took over roughly three hectares of family vines in Avize, in the Côte des Blancs, and became the first in his family to actually make the wine himself.
Every parcel is farmed organically, fermented separately with wild yeasts, so each patch of chalk keeps its own voice. He's also revived near-extinct old Champagne varieties like Arbane and Petit Meslier, planted for the acidity and tension they bring back to the blend.
His flagship, and the bottle chilling on our terrace, is L'Échappée Belle, a blanc de blancs from Grauves, Cramant, Avize and Oger: citrus, wet stone, low dosage, all energy. Étienne calls it simply an easy-drinking Champagne that opens the appetite. That's the whole idea: a grower who bet everything on doing it his own way, farming with real care, making something serious that never takes itself too seriously.
