Champagne Étienne Oudart: The Manoir des Arômes, Brugny

Winegrowers’ portraits Brugny

Champagne Étienne Oudart

The Manoir des Arômes, Brugny

Jacques Oudart's grandparents, Gabriel and Albertine, were farmers in Brugny. His parents, Étienne and Juliana Oudart, inherited the land, transformed it into a vineyard and became winegrowers. Their son has carried on the tradition, and tells us a bit about it.

"My father and mother devoted their lives to building this handsome wine estate. Today, I work the 9 hectares of the property with care and respect. Two years ago, I built the Manoir des Arômes, a fine construction in a hamlet, to lend some stylish functionality to my heritage and create a convivial venue for my wife Karinne and I to welcome the clientele. A significant investment, the project of a lifetime!”
His story is that of a family of wine lovers - like father like son. The grandfather was a farmer at Brugny, a small village over­looking Epernay. The father became a winegrower; in 1958 he planted an estate of nine hectares on the two terroirs he inherited. In the villages around Brugny, where he owned 5.5 hec­tares, he planted the three grape varieties traditionally grown in Champagne, Pinot Meunier (70% of the vineyard), Chardonnay (20%) and Pinot Noir (10%), depending on the exposure of the land. On another estate at Essômes-sur-Marne, near Château-Thierry, he created a 3.5 hectare vineyard, and also planted the three grape varieties, with a predominance of Chardonnay.
“My father bought land with a steep gradient and re-worked the plots to make them suitable for growing. These hillsides, some of which have a 21 degree slope, produce very fruity, really atypical wines. I conserve the old vines, maintain them with care, and practice natural selection of the vine plants. They produce less in terms of quantity, but the grapes are rich in sugar, with very marked tastes of the terroir and incredible fruity aromas.
I use rational pest management, and am a member of the Magister network. And as a member of the Champagne Winegrowers Association, and a correspondent of the CIVC*, I am very aware of good practice guidelines. I feed the vines with organic mulches of poplar bark, which I change every two to three years, depending on the plot. They absorb water and keep the soil very much alive, with a population of earth­worms that tunnel and provide natural aeration.

Jacques et Karinne Oudart.

I deliver my wine to the family-run cooperative in the village of Vinay, which has 172 members, only ten of whom com­mercialise their wines. The winemaking is carried out terroir by terroir and grape variety by grape variety. It is handled by the Union des Producteurs, which delivers 120 hectares to their structure. A significant area, that offers a broad range of aromas for blending, with an in-house Cellar master, and two independent oenologists as consultants.
I retrieve the wines for the Manoir des Arômes once they have been aged in a wine cellar for at least five years. I then take care of riddling, disgorging and, finally dispatching the wines. We present six vintages of Champagne, all quite mature wines with atypical aromas. Four of these vintages were created by my parents: a Brut with a predominance of Pinot Meunier, full-bodied and smooth; a Brut Référence with a combination of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, with lots of character, which won the “Prix d’Excellence des Citadelles du Vin” at Vinexpo; a rather discreetly distributed Demi-Sec and a delicious Rosé.

Jacques Oudart présente les beaux raisins noirs
récoltés dans ses vignes à la vendange 2013.

The prestige cuvee, Juliana vintage 2006, is a blend of the three grape varieties grown on exceptional terroirs that we have reworked, to allow it to acquire a powerful structure and, especially, luscious warm aromas. Lastly, we have created two exceptional wines: a Chardonnay Brut 2005 (Médaille d’Or at the Brussels World Competition in 2013), quite worthy of accompanying a whole meal, and an Extra Brut, a true expres­sion of the terroir, with a delicious hint of bitterness in the finish (Silver Medal 2012 at the Concours des Féminalise)”.

Karinne Oudart préparant une dégustation dans son caveau de réception.

The particularity of Étienne Oudart Champagnes comes from slow ageing of the wines in the wine cellar. They exhale a veritable empire of essences, exude aromas of well-ripened, stewed fruits, slightly developed, giving a very voluptuous result on the palate. These wines were prepared with memorable, convivial mo­ments in mind. Karinne Oudart adores playing the hostess and pulls out all the stops to make her guests welcome.
As the House motto** suggests, she delights in “Taking time over the moment”.


* Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne,
the joint trade association for Champagne

** “Prendre le temps d'un instant”

Marie-Caroline Bourrellis

Champagne Étienne Oudart

15, rue de la Grange Jabled
51530 Brugny - France
Phone: 33 (0)3 26 59 98 01
www.champagne-oudart.com