From Œuvre d’Art to Chef-d’Œuvre
After years of translating Champagne into art, Caroline Brun returns to Champagne Roger Brun, her family-owned house in Aÿ, to protect its legacy, reclaim her place and paint a new chapter in its history.
In Aÿ, a morning spent with Caroline Brun revealed a family legacy at a crossroads, an artist finding her place in Champagne, and a woman determined to protect the family-owned house she was once prevented from running.
I first met Caroline Brun in 2021, albeit through a screen, when I interviewed her over Zoom about her paintings and the singular way she translates wine into art through La Dégustation Visuelle, her own artistic venture. We stayed in touch over the years, following each other’s work from a distance, but never quite managed to meet in person. During my recent stay in Aÿ, I finally seized the opportunity to visit her at the family’s Champagne house.
Caroline greeted me in the tasting room behind the Église Saint-Brice, the historic Gothic church dating from the 15th century that stands at the heart of Aÿ. From the outset, the visit felt less like a formal appointment than an invitation into her world. What I had imagined as a tasting and conversation became something far more revealing: the story of a Champagne house at a crossroads and of a woman reclaiming her place in a family legacy she is determined to preserve, while finding the freedom to shape its future on her own terms.
We began with a drive through the vineyards. Caroline showed me the family’s parcels in Aÿ, perched up just behind Pressoria, the immersive interpretation center, housed in a former Pommery pressing facility, dedicated to understanding Champagne through its terroir, climate, grapes and savoir-faire. She shared how one parcel holds particular significance. La Pelle, a single-vineyard Champagne made entirely from Pinot Noir, comes from a plot that belongs to Caroline herself. More than an expression of Aÿ’s celebrated terroir, it represents a personal relationship with the land and gives her a distinctive place within the story of Champagne Roger Brun.
Back in the tasting room, our conversation turned to the house itself, and the changes Caroline hopes to introduce. Her ambitions extend well beyond a new look for the bottles. She wants to reduce the number of cuvées, bring greater coherence to the range and rethink the way the house presents itself. Rather than simply refresh the existing labels, she envisions a distinctive visual identity built around her own paintings, with a different artwork for each Champagne.
To understand the significance of this project, however, it helps to know what brought Caroline back to the family business in the first place.
For years, she had wanted to play a more active role in the domaine, but working alongside her brother proved impossible. Despite her desire to contribute, she was gradually pushed to the sidelines, denied the opportunity to take a meaningful part in the family enterprise. In a legacy where leadership had long followed a male line, her place remained on the periphery. While her brother occupied the center of the business, Caroline developed her career as an artist, finding in painting a way to express her relationship with wine on her own terms. But she was never only an artist: she was a wine professional who turned to art as a way to vinify in her own way, as well as a communications professional whose work included Bollinger. Condé Nast has cited her as the foremost wine guide in the region.
When her brother unexpectedly abandoned the business last year, the future of Roger Brun became uncertain. The possibility of selling the estate, and bringing the family’s direct involvement to an end, became very real. For Caroline, the prospect was particularly painful because she understood what the loss would mean to her parents. The house was not simply a business to be transferred or sold, it represented their life's work, their commitment and generations of family history.
She was determined not to let it disappear while her father was still alive. She could not bear the thought of her parents witnessing the demise of what they had spent their lives building.
A conversation with Séverine Frerson, cellar master at Perrier-Jouët, helped Caroline turn that determination into action. She recalls Frerson telling her, “You have to try, otherwise you will never know.” It was the encouragement she needed. Caroline put on her hat and went to work.
Taking over, however, was only the beginning. As she immersed herself in the day-to-day operations, she began uncovering practices and decisions from her brother’s tenure that left her with more than a change of leadership to manage. There was a business to put in order, costs to examine and a structure to reconsider. She was not simply stepping into an established role, she had to understand what she had inherited, identify what needed to change and find a more sustainable way forward.
Her plans for Roger Brun reflect that dual responsibility. Reducing the number of cuvées will allow her to focus the range, while standardizing bottle formats should simplify purchasing and operations and help control costs. At the same time, she wants to establish a visual identity that gives Champagne Roger Brun a more recognizable signature, with her paintings at its heart.
It is a particularly fitting direction for someone whose artistic practice developed during the years when she could not contribute to the family business. Caroline is a synesthete painter, translating the sensations of tasting into color, texture, movement and form. The energy of a wine, its texture or the lightness of its bubbles can become visual elements on a canvas. Rather than illustrating wine literally, she offers a personal interpretation of what she experiences in the glass.
When I first interviewed Caroline, this way of seeing Champagne was what caught my attention. Now, with her paintings set to become part of the house’s visual identity, that artistic journey has acquired a new dimension. What she developed independently, during a period when she was excluded from the family enterprise, may become one of the defining features of Roger Brun under her leadership.
Her art is no longer simply a parallel expression of her relationship with Champagne. It is becoming part of the way the house will tell its own story.
Our visit ended downstairs in the private Atelier inside her parents’ house (a hôtel particulier styled building) steeped in the history of the family and the origins of Champagne Roger Brun. The house seemed to hold the memory of generations, but one image in particular stands out: a massive black-and-white photograph dominating the dining room, showing generations of the Roger Brun family working in the vineyards.
It was more than a family portrait. The photograph captured the labor behind the name, the people who worked the land and the continuity Caroline is now trying to protect. Standing before it, the question of succession became tangible. This was not merely about ownership or a change in management; it was about whether the work of those generations would continue.
Caroline’s Atelier itself has taken on a new life as she has transformed it into her studio and a space for intimate private masterclasses. A few of her artworks hang on the walls, including one inspired by Nicolas Feuillatte. Surrounded by her work, in the very house where the family’s Champagne story took shape, it is only fitting these different worlds to meet.
I had known Caroline’s art before I knew her in person. Now I was seeing the connection between the paintings and the wines, between the artist who had found a way to express Champagne from outside the family business and the woman who had returned to take responsibility for its future. Her artistic language, once an independent path, is becoming part of the identity she is building for Roger Brun.
None of this will happen overnight. Taking charge of a Champagne house requires more than vision, it demands commercial discipline, difficult decisions and the patience to evolve a range without losing the confidence of those who already know it. Caroline understands the challenge. She is not approaching the task as a symbolic gesture or simply reclaiming a family name. She intends to make the business work.
Throughout our conversation, I was struck by the palpable force of her determination. She is warm and welcoming, but beneath that warmth lies a remarkable resolve. She knows what is at stake and has chosen to meet the challenge rather than turn away from it.
There is an irony at the heart of her story that stayed with me long after I left Aÿ. The person who was prevented from taking her place in the family business is the one who never truly left it. She finds herself at the helm of her family-owned champagne house preserving what her parents built without being confined by what came before. She is taking responsibility for a legacy that matters deeply to her, while giving herself the freedom to shape.
After an entire morning with Caroline, I left with much more than notes for an article. I had witnessed a woman turning years of exclusion into an opportunity to redefine her place in Champagne. Caroline is no longer waiting for a place in the story; she is now writing the next chapter herself. And in a house where the legacy of men has long shaped the narrative, she is beginning to write a different kind of future.
For more information visit: champagnerogerbrun.com and https://www.caroline-brun.com/
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