Henri Giraud: 400 years in Champagne

From the moment you walk through the gates at Champagne Henri Giraud in Aÿ, there’s a sense that this is a house with a difference.

The celebrated grand cru vineyards of Aÿ are associated with names such as Bollinger, Deutz, Gosset and Ayala: houses that exude a sense of classicism and heritage with their cast-iron gates, quiet hallways and historic cellars.

Step into Henri Giraud, on the other hand, and you’ll see a Japanese water feature, twisting forms of glass and steel, and wall-to-wall colour.

There’s even a cigar room. In an age in which restraint is the default setting for everything in Champagne – from the wines themselves to the design and communication that surrounds them – Giraud wears its heart on its sleeve.

This is a house that isn’t afraid of a little hedonism, a little decadence, a little fun.

See Hewson’s notes and scores for six Champagnes from the historic house of Henri Giraud

All in the family

Despite the modernity, the Giraud-Hémart family has been present in Aÿ for 400 years. It’s an anniversary the house couldn’t pass up. About 1,000 bottles were popped at the celebrations in June.

It was the arrival of Claude Giraud during the 1970s that saw the first wines bottled under the name Henri Giraud after his father, who first began making the family’s own wines under the label ‘Giraud-Hémart’ following World War II.

In a relatively rare feat for a successful small Champagne house, it remains entirely family owned to this day.

‘After phylloxera and later the [second world] war, they installed themselves in the village and began to make their own wines,’ says Emanuelle Giraud, who today looks after the day-to-day running of the estate. ‘It has always been a family story.’

Claude was also the instigator of what has become the house’s signature: its combination of fine Pinot Noir from Aÿ with a highly original use of oak vinification.

This includes new barrels that the house commissions (and indeed helps produce) from the Argonne forest to the east of the Champagne region.

‘Claude began working with the forest in the 2000s,’ says cellar master Sébastien Le Golvet, the mastermind behind many of the house’s most imaginative developments over the last decade.

‘People know about the difference between oaks in different forests, but they didn’t look at the terroir of the forest itself – the difference between trees!’

In a strikingly detailed project, the house selects individual trees for individual barrels, even adjusting the kind of tree used – faster-growing or slower-growing, with different sun expositions and wood grain sizes – depending on the requirements of the vintage in the vineyards.

Next-level terroir

The goal is ‘not to make oaky wines, but to put together the terroir of Aÿ and the terroir of the Argonne’, says Le Golvet – much of the house’s work with wood is therefore focused on extreme-precision toasting to achieve nuanced profiles and avoid bitter, tough extraction from the barrels.

Together with a series of perpetual reserves – a solera-style system for blending and storing base wines across multiple vintages – tailored to each cuvée, the marriage between vineyard and forest yields wines of striking density, flavour concentration and gastronomic potential.

These wines have also shown constant evolution towards greater precision and refinement over the past decade. Champagne lovers who haven’t sampled Henri Giraud wines for a few years should not be wary of diving back in.

‘I always say the best wines of Giraud are tomorrow’s,’ says Le Golvet. Today’s wines, though, remain essential discoveries for anybody who is curious about modern Champagne.

Hewson’s pick: Six of the best Henri Giraud bottlings

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