3, 2, 1, 0… GOnet! One Woman. One Family. One Very Different Champagne Story.

A conversation with Chantal Gonet of

Champagne Philippe Gonet

There are Champagne houses whose identity is inseparable from the place where their story began. Champagne Philippe Gonet is one of them. Located in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, where Chardonnay has historically been particularly important, Philippe Gonet has made the grape almost a manifesto for the house. But behind the bottles and the terroir is an equally compelling human story, one of family, unexpected responsibility, international ambition and the determination to carry a legacy forward without simply repeating the past.

The Gonet family traces its Champagne history back to 1830 and established itself in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger in 1908. Over nearly two centuries, the family has evolved from winegrowers into an internationally recognized Champagne producer while remaining deeply connected to the vineyards that have defined its identity.

And while Le Mesnil is at the heart of the estate, Gonet is not exclusively a Le Mesnil story. The family's vineyards extend across eight villages and approximately 20 hectares, encompassing different parts of Champagne and allowing the house to work with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. That diversity is important because it prevents the house from becoming overly defined by one Grand Cru village.

As part of my ongoing series exploring the women shaping Champagne, I reached out to Chantal Brégeon-Gonet, having previously interviewed Anne Malassagne and Charline Drappier, both members of La Transmission, Femmes en Champagne. I had met Chantal’s brother, Pierre Gonet, at Le Printemps des Champagnes in Reims last April, which gave me an opportunity to discover more about the house before sitting down with Chantal to hear her own story.

At the center of that story today are seventh-generation siblings Chantal Brégeon-Gonet and Pierre Gonet. Their journey into Champagne, however, was not quite the traditional succession story one might imagine, particularly for Chantal, who never initially intended to become part of that legacy.

“I had always thought I might escape my destiny,” Chantal confessed

Coming from a multigenerational wine family, she understood that succession traditionally favored the men. Her two brothers had studied viticulture and oenology, while she chose a very different path. She attended the École Polytechnique Féminine and specialized in aerospace engineering, fascinated by airplanes and initially imagining a career far removed from the vineyards of Champagne.

Then her father died prematurely. At the time, the family business was thriving, but a 50% inheritance tax placed the family under significant financial strain. Chantal found herself increasingly involved in helping her mother manage the estate while still trying to complete her studies. Even during her final internship at Alstom, she was answering customer calls and messages for the family business.

Looking back, she describes her return to Champagne as something that happened almost against her original plans.

“It was really despite myself. I was studying engineering and had imagined a completely different future. But after my father died, we felt that the survival of the company depended on it. So I became more and more involved, until eventually I realized that I had to come back,” she commented.

When she and her brother Pierre ultimately returned to the business, their roles took shape organically. Pierre gravitated toward production, while Chantal found her place in sales, commercial development and, eventually, international markets.

“It happened very naturally. My brother was passionate about the production, the vineyards and the wine, while I was more interested in the commercial side, in meeting people and developing the markets. We complemented each other quite well.”

That division of roles helped propel the estate forward. Today, Philippe Gonet sells roughly twice as much Champagne as when Chantal joined, and the business has evolved from selling a significant portion of its grapes to the négoce to purchasing additional grapes to support its growth.

“Now, we sell twice as much Champagne, and we even buy grapes,” she said. “Whereas at the time, we were selling half of our grapes to the négoce.”

A major turning point came in 1997, when Chantal moved to Singapore with her husband. Initially, she thought the move might finally give her an opportunity to step away from Champagne.

“I thought, maybe I'm not really destined for this,” she recalled.

Instead, Singapore pulled her deeper into it. Through friends, visiting winegrowers and importers, she quickly began making connections throughout Asia. Those relationships eventually opened doors in Malaysia, Japan and other markets. She participated in VinExpo events and began developing an international network that would become an important part of her role within the family business. At the time, she was doing something relatively unusual for a small Champagne producer.

“We were really ahead of the others,” she explained. “It was a little bit avant-garde at the time.”

Living in Singapore also gave her access to a valuable international network.

“When you live in Singapore, you have an expatriate life where you travel a lot,” she explained. “For a weekend, you take a plane. You go to Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia. And that's how I found contacts.”

Those relationships, she says, are still part of her professional network today. That international experience would ultimately become one of Chantal's defining contributions to Philippe Gonet. Pierre became increasingly immersed in the vineyards, winemaking and cellar, while Chantal became the outward-facing voice of the family estate, building relationships and bringing the wines to markets far beyond Le Mesnil.

The division reveals something fundamental about Philippe Gonet: tradition and evolution are not opposing forces here. They work together. Pierre translates the vineyards into wine. Chantal helps translate that wine, and the story behind it, to the world.

And that story naturally begins with the place at the heart of the Gonet identity: Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. For anyone who loves Blanc de Blancs, the name Le Mesnil carries considerable weight. One of Champagne's 17 Grand Cru villages, it is renowned for Chardonnay with remarkable freshness, tension, longevity and mineral character.

Chantal describes the Le Mesnil terroir as the foundation of the house's identity.

“We are very sensitive to Chardonnay,” she explained. “My brother has really become passionate about Chardonnay, and we currently produce six Blanc de Blancs cuvées, with a seventh in development.”

But the Gonet style isn't about producing austere wines simply because the terroir allows it. Over the past 35 years, Chantal says, the style of the house has progressed considerably, in part because the palate and vision of the person making the wine inevitably evolve as well.

“The style has evolved a lot,” she explained. “The cellar master also has a life that evolves and a palate that evolves. He makes the wines in his own image.”

Chantal describes the wines as mineral, saline and precise, wines that wake up the palate.

“We have really moved toward wines with a very mineral aesthetic, with great salinity and beautiful tension,” she said. “We love wines that make you salivate, that tickle your taste buds.”

The objective is to strike a balance between minerality and pleasure, freshness and depth, precision and texture, a balance that runs through the entire Gonet range.

When I asked Chantal which cuvée best defines the identity of the house, she answered without hesitation: Signature Blanc de Blancs.

Bringing together Chardonnay from several areas, including the Côte des Blancs, Côte de Sézanne and Montgueux, Signature offers a broader expression of the Gonet style. For Chantal, it captures the two sides of the house: the gourmand character of Chardonnay, with its fruit, pastry and almond notes, alongside the freshness and tension that are hallmarks of Gonet’s Champagnes.

“It has exactly these two facets,” she explained. “The gourmand facet, which is really about the fruit of Chardonnay, with its aromas that are already slightly brioche-like, pastry-like, and the aromas of almonds. And on the palate there is this freshness that is recognizable in all our Champagnes and that really makes the singularity of the house.”

In many ways, Signature is a distillation of the Gonet philosophy: generous yet precise, expressive yet fresh, with enough tension to keep the wine vibrant.

If Signature captures the house through a blend of terroirs, Belemnita offers a more focused expression of the place at its heart: Le Mesnil-sur-Oger.

One of the house's most distinctive wines, Belemnita is a Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs made exclusively from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Chardonnay. The cuvée explores what happens when the village's characteristic tension is given time to develop.

A Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs made from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Chardonnay, the cuvée was created to explore what happens when the village's characteristic tension is given time to develop.

“What’s interesting about Le Mesnil is its ability to reveal itself over time,” Chantal explained.

The wine includes fruit from vines planted in 1929 and spends at least 10 years aging in the cellar. Its name pays homage to the geology of the region, referencing the fossilized belemnites found in the chalk.

The geological history beneath the vines is an important part of the Gonet story. For the house, that chalk is more than an interesting geological detail; it is part of the character of the wines.

Chantal describes the mature expression of Le Mesnil as particularly fascinating: beneath the tension and austerity lies a remarkable evolution of aromas, mushroom, pastry, candied citrus and sometimes truffle.

These aren't necessarily wines designed for immediate gratification. She describes them as “wines of soul,” wines that ask the drinker to slow down, think and discover.

“They need this reflection, this moment to pause,” she said.

If Belemnita represents a focused expression of Le Mesnil, the TER collection approaches terroir from another perspective. Rather than focusing on a single parcel, Gonet uses several terroirs to demonstrate how different sites can complement and correct one another.

That is an important distinction in Champagne, where blending is not simply a technical necessity but a fundamental part of the region's identity. Chantal explained that one terroir can bring something another lacks, creating balance and ultimately producing a more complete wine.

“One terroir will correct another,” she explained. “It will perhaps bring an additional something that another doesn't have, or it will balance it.”

The TER Blanc combines Chardonnay from three terroirs, while the range also explores the broader interaction between the three Champagne varieties.

The wines are presented in distinctive bottles inspired by a 19th-century bottle discovered in the family's cellar. The original had a particularly narrow neck and generous, rounded body. What began as an aesthetic tribute to the historic bottle unexpectedly revealed an intriguing technical advantage: the shape left less air inside the bottle and reduced the amount of exchange through the cork, slowing oxidation and influencing the wine's evolution.

“We didn’t expect the consequences at all,” she commented, “In fact, it’s a little bit like a magnum, because there is less air in relation to the wine, so the wine evolves more slowly. With the narrow neck of the bottle, there are also fewer exchanges with the outside through the cork, so there is less oxidation.”

That willingness to explore while remaining anchored in the identity of the estate is one of the characteristics that makes Gonet so interesting. The wines explore different interpretations of the same fundamental ideas: place, Chardonnay, freshness, minerality and balance.

The same philosophy can be found in 3, 2, 1, 0, a Blanc de Blancs whose name functions almost like a winemaking equation: three years of aging, two terroirs, one grape variety and zero dosage.

The concept dates back to 2008, when Chantal noticed increasing interest from sommeliers and restaurant professionals in wines with little or no dosage.

“The customers, mainly in restaurants, the sommeliers, really liked the stripped- down side,” she explained. “Dosage was no longer fashionable. They wanted Champagnes that really corresponded completely to their terroir, without makeup.”

But simply removing the dosage from an existing cuvée wasn't enough.

“If it's balanced with dosage, it can't be balanced without it,” Chantal pointed out.

The wine had to be constructed differently from the beginning. Gonet found the answer by blending Chardonnay from two contrasting terroirs: the austere, tense character of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger with the riper, more generous fruit of Montgueux.

“I initially thought about calling it ‘Extreme’ or even ‘Extremist,’ but I didn’t want to use the term ‘Brut Nature’ because at the time it could create confusion with natural wine. So, we eventually called it 3, 2, 1, 0: three years of aging, two terroirs, one grape variety and zero dosage,” she said amusingly.

Chantal's contribution to Champagne extends beyond Philippe Gonet. About a decade ago, she became part of La Transmission, Femmes en Champagne, a collective of women decision-makers and estate owners created to share their experience, knowledge and vision of Champagne. Today, the group brings together 12 women representing different generations, regions and types of Champagne businesses, from family estates to major houses.

The women felt that Champagne was increasingly being reduced to celebration, glamour and consumption, while the people working behind the bottles, the growers, producers, women and men were disappearing from the story.

“We weren't satisfied with the image of Champagne becoming something so festive, so focused on celebration,” she explained. “We felt we were forgetting the men and women behind the bottles.”

La Transmission brings together women from different generations, regions and corners of the Champagne industry, from smaller family estates to larger houses. For Chantal, that diversity is precisely what gives the group its strength.

“It was interesting to have such a diverse group,” she said. “We have larger houses and smaller producers, different generations and women from different parts of Champagne. That diversity makes the conversation much richer.”

La Transmission has become both a professional and personal sounding board for its members, while also organizing events and tastings to engage with the wider public. But its purpose is not primarily commercial.

“We're not really here to sell our Champagnes,” Chantal explained. “We're here to help Champagne evolve, to communicate about the region, make it more attractive, and perhaps also make it simpler and more accessible.”

That last point is particularly important to her. Chantal sees Champagne as both a wine of celebration and a wine worthy of a place at the table, something that can be opened spontaneously, enjoyed with a meal and appreciated without requiring a special occasion or an encyclopedic knowledge of the region.

“Champagne has to be accessible,” she said. “You shouldn't need a good reason to open a bottle of Champagne.”

She also sees a new generation of consumers approaching Champagne with genuine curiosity. “With social media, even young people want to understand the why and the how. They're hungry for information.”

But that enthusiasm can sometimes be met with too much complexity. “Sometimes, we tell them almost too much. They become over-informed” she said. “It becomes complicated.”

Her answer ultimately comes down to what is essential: “Pleasure above all.”

For Chantal, the idea of transmission is not simply a theme, it is something she is now experiencing within her own family. Her daughter, after spending seven years in Canada, is returning to Champagne to undertake a year of viticultural training, with the possibility of eventually joining the family business. Meanwhile, her brother Pierre’s son, who studied viticulture, has already returned to the estate.

The prospect of the two cousins eventually working together marks the beginning of another generation at Philippe Gonet. Yet Chantal is conscious that they must ultimately find their own path. What she and Pierre can offer them is something they themselves never had: time to learn from the previous generation before taking on the responsibility of the business.

“They have the chance to have us,” she said. “We didn't have that chance. We can give them the time to learn, ask questions and understand the business before they have to make their own decisions.”

What Chantal hopes to pass on, however, goes beyond technical knowledge. It is the culture of a family business, the shared sense of purpose that connects everyone working toward the same goal.

“The culture of a family business has a lot of value because it's an entire team that makes the house move forward,” she explained. “Everyone is working toward the same objective: producing a beautiful Champagne that gives pleasure to the customer. We sell pleasure. That's what is important.”

That philosophy is becoming increasingly important as Champagne confronts one of its greatest challenges: climate change. Chantal admits that it is not necessarily the subject producers want to discuss. But the reality is impossible to ignore.

“Every year, realizing that it's getting worse and worse, we really have to adapt our practices in the vineyard,” she said. “Harvest dates are moving earlier. Grapes are reaching higher potential alcohol, while water availability is becoming increasingly unpredictable.”

This year's harvest is another example. The season arrived exceptionally early, with high sugar concentration and lower-than-expected yields caused by dry conditions. Yet there was also a positive side.

“The grapes are extremely healthy,” Chantal explained. “We haven't had rain, so we haven't had fungi either.”

For Chantal, adapting to climate change is no longer a question of if, but how. Vineyard practices, planting methods and even grape varieties may eventually need to change if Champagne is to preserve the style and balance that define it.

“Maybe we'll change grape varieties. Maybe we'll change the way we plant,” she said. “Really, so that the taste of Champagne remains what it should be.”

The urgency is heightened by the changing landscape of sparkling wine itself. As warmer climates open new possibilities for production in places such as Belgium and Scandinavia, Champagne can no longer assume that its position is guaranteed.

“We have to be very conscious in Champagne,” Chantal said. “The entire profession has to mobilize so that we have wines that are unique and can never be copied.”

That uniqueness, she believes, begins with terroir. “We will always have our chalk,” she said, “with this different climate.” But she is equally clear that chalk alone cannot protect Champagne from a changing world.

“We really have to adapt our practices in the vineyard,” she said. “Every year, realizing that it's getting worse and worse, we have to adapt.”

For Chantal, complacency is the real danger. “We must not fall asleep,” she said. The challenge now is to innovate and adapt without losing the characteristics that make Champagne what it is.

Perhaps that is ultimately what makes Chantal Gonet's story, and Philippe Gonet's story, so compelling. The house has remained firmly anchored in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, in Chardonnay, in chalk and in a family history stretching back nearly two centuries. Yet its evolution has been anything but static.

From experimenting with different terroirs and zero-dosage wines to exploring new approaches in the cellar and building an international presence, the house continues to evolve while remaining grounded in its identity. Chantal’s own journey reflects that same balance. She never intended to enter the Champagne business, yet circumstances brought her back to the family estate, where she went on to shape its commercial and international development. While her brother Pierre focuses on translating the vineyards into wine, Chantal has spent decades helping the world understand the story behind those wines.

For her, tradition is not about repeating the past. It is about knowing what is worth preserving while remaining open to change. That philosophy is perhaps best captured in the way she approaches transmission: giving the next generation the knowledge and foundations they need, while allowing them to determine what comes next.

“It’s about tradition without standing still and evolution without losing the essence,” she confessed.

In the end, Chantal’s message is quite simple. Amid all the complexity facing Champagne, from climate change and changing consumer habits to the challenge of passing a family business to a new generation, what matters most is remembering why the wine exists in the first place.

“We sell pleasure. That’s the most important thing,” she said. “And even more important is that we all get to enjoy it.”

For more information go to: https://www.champagne-philippe-gonet.com