Champagne Bonnet – Ponson

Domaine Bonnet-Ponson is located in the small town of Chamery, in the so-called Montagne de Reims, one of Champagne’s most prestigious sub-regions. Currently run by 5th and 6th generation owners, the family domain has been producing wine since 1862.

Each wine producer in the Champagne region is given an identifying term, depending on how they make their wine. For natural wine lovers, "Récoltant manipulant" is the most appealing term, as it immediately identifies a producer who makes wine exclusively from the grapes of his own vineyards. It was with this status that Grégoire Bonnet began his career as a vigneron in Chamery in 1862, when he founded the “Champagne Bonnet” house. In the 1940s, the 14-year-old André Bonnet began to contribute to the family business, his main task being to plow the vineyards with the help of two horses.

In 1956, André met Monique Ponson, who lived in the nearby town of Vrigny and who also came from a family of wine producers. The marriage naturally led to the creation of Domaine Bonnet-Ponson. André and Monique not only expanded the vineyard area to 9 hectares, but also dug and built the new cellars with their own hands, which allowed them to age their champagnes in the ideal way. In keeping with family tradition, in 1979 their son Thierry joined the family business.

Thierry Bonnet’s son, Cyril, began managing the estate in 2013, which is now in its sixth generation. Always seeking to make increasingly genuine and complex wines, they have embraced organic farming, investing in farming without any synthetic pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers, and thus obtaining organic certification for all their vineyards in 2016. In the cellar, their approach is minimalist and artisanal, even vinifying without the addition of sulphur dioxide and working with indigenous yeasts. The path that father and son have chosen now in the 21st century is the exact opposite of the mass production that is so common in the Champagne region. Their search for the origins and ancestral expression of the region’s unique terroir also led them to make still wines, the “Coteaux Champenois”, the usual type of winemaking in the region until the beginning of the 18th century, when the second fermentation method was introduced on a large scale.

Time matter in the process of Champagne making: all the cuvées stay at least 4 years on lees and up to 10 years for the vintage cuvées. The average stock of the cellar is about 450,000 bottles resting under the house.