In Champagne, a Quiet Soul Speaks Through the Vines: Franck Pascal, the Sixth-Sensed Vigneron Crafting Champagne from Soul and Soil

I first met Franck Pascal in 2024 at Bulles Bio during Le Printemps des Champagnes and was immediately enchanted, not only by his expressive, soulful wines, but also by the man behind them. Thoughtful, grounded, and quietly passionate, Franck exudes the same authenticity and depth that define every bottle he produces.

This year, I had the privilege of attending his off-circuit event, Vineyard Walk & Masterclass, held with intention beyond the usual bustle of Printemps. What unfolded was a truly singular experience. We began the day in the vines, walking the very land that gives life to his champagnes, as Franck shared his philosophy and profound convictions. But it soon became clear that Franck moves beyond the ordinary senses. With an almost mystical attunement - a sixth sense - he listens to the whispers of the earth, feeling the pulse of the soil and the breath of the vines. A uniquely exceptional vine whisperer who transforms grapes into champagne that tells a story, one of spirit and the timeless soul of the terroir. His words, like his wines, were unhurried, precise, and full of quiet reverence. It was an exceptional morning of connection, tasting, and spiritual discovery.

We then gathered for a beautifully curated lunch at Bistro Larry’s, where each dish was thoughtfully paired with his wines — Quintessence, Sérénité, Tolérance, and both the white and red Coteaux Champenois — not as an afterthought, but as an extension of their story. It was more than a meal; it was a celebration of harmony, intention, and generosity.

The experience was unlike any other I’ve encountered. It revealed not only the soul of Franck Pascal’s wines, but of Franck himself, generous, sincere, and wholly committed to a vision of viticulture and winemaking rooted in respect, vitality, purpose and authenticity.

I was so touched by Franck’s gentleness, his generosity, and the radiant passion he brings to his craft that I knew I had to reconnect with him, not for more bubbles, but for more stories. To listen. To ask questions. To understand the roots of his journey and the vision that guides it.

There’s no need to list Franck Pascal’s reputation as a pioneer in biodynamics and natural winemaking, nor to emphasize that he’s been championing a chemical-free approach for over two decades, long before such philosophies were understood, let alone embraced. It becomes clear, as you read his words in this interview and see the world through his lens, that Franck’s ethos goes far deeper than labels transcending organic and biodynamic designations, drawing from naturopathic principles and energy healing to guide every decision, from vineyard to cellar. He engages not merely with the land, but in profound communion with it.

In Champagne, where tradition and prestige often lead the narrative, Franck’s voice resonates differently, not louder, but more soulfully with quiet authenticity.

Because what Franck offers is more than wine. It’s an invitation to slow down, to pay attention, and to remember that true beauty begins in the soil, but lives in the soul.

You and your wife Isabelle both come from winemaking families. What does the heritage of this family know-how mean to you?

For me, it’s quite mixed, because I didn’t initially want to become a winemaker. I really wanted to do something else. I experienced this profession more as a constraint when I was younger. So I pursued studies specifically to avoid becoming a winemaker, but life ultimately led me back onto the path of the family estate.

This heritage represents, at once, a constraint, a blessing, and a kind of freedom but a responsible freedom.

Eventually, I told myself I’d give it a try, and I truly fell in love with the craft. I became deeply passionate about it, and I had so many enriching exchanges with the vineyard that nourished me. The "blessing" part comes from being able to feel, deep in my gut, that something is happening, something real.

The connection I have with my vines is like the connection many people have with their dog. There's something there, we often call it love, but it’s broader than love.

The freedom part is that, even though there are strict regulations in Champagne, we still have the freedom to create the cuvées we want, to shape the winemaking process, to define our own approach to terroir and to the craft itself. That freedom allows every grower in Champagne to express their own vision, their own story, their own desires, to dig deep and find what truly makes them come alive.

But this freedom also comes with responsibility. Just because we’re free doesn’t mean we can do whatever we like. We must behave responsibly, toward the people who work with us, toward our consumers, and in terms of our environmental impact.

This family know-how is both an expression of authenticity and a way to create wines that reflect who we are, infused with our own human values.

When I decided to embrace this profession, I had two core principles. First: to make Champagnes that would honor my ancestors, so that if they came back to share a glass with me, they’d be proud. And second: to work in a way that reflects my personal sensitivity.

As a child, I found it difficult to connect with other kids because I realized I didn’t see the world the way they did. For example, at school, when the teacher asked us to draw a tree, I would draw the light I saw surrounding the tree. The teacher would say, “But there’s no light around trees,” and I’d reply, “Yes there is, look!”

I have a kind of perception that many people don’t share, and it’s this perception, this sensitivity, this light, that I try to express in my wines. I want that light to carry emotion, and that, to me, is essential.

The tragic death of your brother was the catalyst that led you to take over the family estate. How did this profound loss affect your outlook on life, your Champagne house, and your wines?

The death of my brother ... what I’m going to say may sound strange. But in fact, I knew it before it happened. I was coming back from preparatory classes in Metz. I parked my car in the courtyard of the estate, and my brother was on the step of the vendangeoir, wringing out a mop, because that night he was celebrating his 18th birthday with his friends. And when I looked him in the eye, I saw in a split second that he wouldn’t be there the next day. It went through my whole body. I had this icy feeling, the certainty that my brother was going to die soon.

It was painful, and yet there was also a gift behind it. It balances things, though I’m not yet entirely at peace with it. But it awakened a part of me I had voluntarily shut away. I had blocked off that dimension because, in school, my connection with the teacher during art class, and with the other children, was difficult. We lived in separate worlds, and we didn’t understand each other. I couldn’t integrate or connect on their level, and they couldn’t connect on mine. So, I became quite solitary. And the only way I found to escape that situation was to cut myself off from that sensitive dimension and focus on tangible things. That allowed me to pursue strong academic studies. I became an engineer in mechanical systems and automation. That path let me live intellectually, detached from the vibrational, non-tangible, non-measurable, invisible aspects of life.

And my brother Jérôme reopened all of that. That’s the gift he left me when he passed. And once that door was open again, I couldn’t approach winemaking like others do. Around me, many winemakers think in terms of vineyard exploitation, yield, money, etc. But those values became secondary for me.

For me, what mattered most was having living soil, a vine that lives, that expresses its inner being and manifests something in its grapes that it couldn’t, if it were subjected to chemicals, or rooted in soil polluted by pesticides, or if the biodiversity, which is a treasure for the parcel, was destroyed by chemical products. I can feel it when I’m in my vines.

My goal is to create exceptional wines. That sensitivity, compounded over time, is what led us to organic farming. But even with organic methods, I didn’t see my soils progressing the way I had hoped. I needed a return to something truly authentic, to restore life to everything.

In 2001, I didn’t even know what biodynamics was. So, I visited winemakers in Alsace, in Switzerland, in Germany. I saw the kind of soils I wanted to have. I saw radiant vines. I tasted wines that were vibrant, airy, full of emotion. It was magnificent. And I said to myself: This is what I want to do.

So, in 2002, we converted two-thirds of the vineyard to biodynamics while keeping a portion under conventional methods for comparison. And after four years, the superior level in the biodynamic wines was clear.

Honestly, if I hadn’t reopened that dimension in myself, I think I would’ve stayed in the conventional system. Deep down, I’m still convinced that there will always be people looking for exceptional products.

You are based in Baslieux-Sous-Châtillon and work with clay-based soils. How does the identity of this terroir express itself across your eight champagnes?

Indeed, we are in the clay-based part of Champagne, the Tertiary era; the Secondary era is where you find chalk. In fact, if you want to truly express the terroir, you can't focus solely on the clay, as it's only one component. We are on soils with hard limestone clay, flint clay, and millstone clay. These are the three dominant soil types in the valley where we’re located, an amphitheater-shaped valley about 10 km in diameter.

Clay is one of the foundations of the terroir, so the idea is to include that clay component but not stop there. We aim to bring out the minerality of the flint, the limestone, and the millstone. That can only happen through a living soil approach and a fertilization philosophy that moves beyond conventional methods.

The challenge lies in finding the right amount of fertilization for each plot, enough to avoid saturating the clays while maintaining long-term biological activity in the soil. This biological activity breaks down organic matter, in our case, composts; in others’, chemical fertilizers, and those composts require microbial life, which helps create a porous soil structure. That porosity allows rain to seep deeply instead of running off compacted surfaces, and as it seeps, it brings oxygen, enabling the roots to grow downward.

It took us ten years to fully stop using synthetic fertilizers. Eventually, we reached a point where the connection between the roots and the bedrock was reestablished. During tastings, this was immediately evident: the presence of minerality, an almost electric tension on the tongue that gave the wines a longer finish and significantly improved aging potential.

Depending on the terroir, minerality expresses itself in different ways. In more structured soils, minerality is embedded in the body of the wine, while in stonier soils, it creates a sharper, more linear expression.

Thanks to this approach, our wines gained energy. We often talk about tension in wine, but tension can also exist in a stretched elastic, it’s dynamic. In organic farming, we found a better balance between sugar and acid, and the wines had more length on the palate, creating wines with lift, lightness, and a sense of elegance.

Of all your cuvées, which one has most shaped your understanding of the culture and spirit of your house?

I'm not sure there's one cuvée in particular because each has played its role. In the beginning, we started with the creation of the cuvée “Reliance,” where the idea was to connect wine lovers with people who know nothing about wine, to respond to a sommelier’s challenge. The goal was to create a wine that would be enjoyable for people unfamiliar with wine, while still possessing all the characteristics that a connoisseur would expect. That was the first challenge: how to make a non-dosé Champagne with all those qualities, a non-dosé wine that could hold its own as an aperitif and still surprise on a Michelin-starred table.

Another cuvée that really helped us move forward was in 2009, when we took over vineyards on the north-facing slopes of the village, a completely different terroir compared to the south-facing slopes, where the soils are lighter and stonier. In 2009, when I tasted the grapes, there was a disconnect between what the climate allowed this cuvée to express and the stage at which the wine was evolving, there was a kind of blockage. So, I made a commitment to the vineyard to fully embrace everything it produced, and to stop separating the cuvées and the tailles. Like my grandfather used to do, we decided to press the grapes from start to finish and keep all the juice together, at every stage, to preserve the identity of the terroir.

That cuvée helped me grow a lot, because the moment I made that decision, it felt like a deep personal commitment and I believe the vines felt it too. We achieved ripeness levels I never even imagined possible. As I often say, it's like the relationship between a dog and its master, I have that kind of connection with my vines. We exchange, we listen, we speak to each other, and we understand one another, even if we don’t speak the same language, and that sets things in motion. That cuvée really helped me evolve in the spirit of how I do my work.

Since 2004, your estate transitioned to organic farming, and then to biodynamics in 2009. What have been the advantages and challenges of this approach?

As for the dates, they’re not exactly accurate. Regarding the organic certification, we started very quickly in 2000, and after several years of conversion, I decided to become certified. So I called the Ecocert organization and asked to be certified. The person told me, “That’s not how it works, you have to certify your first year of conversion, then the second, then the third, and after that you’re considered organic.” So that’s why we’ve been officially organic since 2004.

We started working biodynamically in 2002, and similarly, I was doing it based on my intuition, my heart, and my sensitivity, not to get a label. By 2005, we were fully biodynamic. But biodynamics is just a starting point. It takes time for that to be reflected in the wine.

The advantage of biodynamics is that it gives us the tools to make great wines. That, for me, is the biggest benefit, because there are many drawbacks. You need two to three times more people to work organically and biodynamically than in conventional farming. That means two to three times more equipment as well. Yields are often lower, because the vines aren’t “bodybuilt” or pushed to overproduce, they produce in line with what the terroir naturally allows.

Another challenge I’ve seen over the past 30 years is the shift in climate. The first time I really felt it was much hotter than usual was in 1999, then again in 2005, and so on. Today, with climate change, we’re facing new variables that disrupt Champagne’s ancestral balance, that mix of oceanic and continental climates. Now we really feel the effects of the El Niño and El Niña phenomena.

This year, 2025, we’re under a El Niña pattern, which means a lot of heat and dry weather. That’s good for preventing disease, but it brings other challenges, like the vines struggling to grow in unhydrated soils. The organic matter that feeds the vine also has a harder time transforming.

In El Niño years, the challenge is that it’s like having a monsoon season spread across the entire year. We end up with extreme precipitation conditions that are tough for vines, which rely on sunlight. At the same time, the humidity and temperature create perfect conditions for fungal diseases. The vine simply isn’t adapted to that kind of environment, so we’re forced to protect the plants with treatments just to have a harvest at all.

So far, we haven’t been able to have a full harvest in years like 2012, 2016, 2021, and 2024, each with increasing rainfall. That doesn’t mean the wines aren’t high quality, the juice from 2024 is excellent, but the quantity suffers.

So yes, we’re still able to produce great wines, and that’s the upside. But economically, it’s becoming more and more difficult.

Biodynamics is also a way to reconnect with ancestral agricultural practices. Why did we lose touch with these methods?

Paradoxically, I think it’s the loss of human sensitivity. I believe that through education, understanding, and science, we’ve ingrained a lot of beliefs into people’s minds, and there are things they no longer believe in or see as possible. I was a victim of that myself, when I studied engineering, I had a very Cartesian mind. But when my wife fell ill in 2005, she came back from a medical appointment and said to me, "I refuse chemotherapy, I feel like it’s going to kill me. I need to do something else first, but I don’t know what."

It’s this dimension, of listening to oneself internally, that many people reject. It comes with time and the development of wisdom, but in youth, we tend to push it away. Then we form habits, and it becomes very hard to break out of them and question ourselves. So faced with this situation, the doctors told my wife she had six months to a year to live at most without chemo. But it was her life, so I told her, "It’s your decision. I’m with you."

Little by little, we met a therapist in Paris who, in five weeks of remote work, managed to bring almost all her blood test results back into the normal range. I saw a woman who used to need to sleep 4 to 6 hours during the day become someone full of new projects. She became the mayor of our village, relaunched the village association, was filled with energy again, and no longer needed daytime sleep, to the point that people would say to her, "It’s impossible, you were never sick."

This experience forced me to go beyond myself and to learn. I wanted to understand how someone working remotely, without medication, could restore someone’s health. That’s what opened us up to another dimension: to fully embrace who we are and to infuse that into every gesture of daily life, in the hope of creating a better world.

How has this renewed relationship with nature impacted the quality of your champagnes today?

It’s difficult to describe because biodynamics is necessary, but it’s not sufficient on its own. So we’ve worked on other aspects that complement it, and this allows us, on the eve of harvest, to go taste the grapes and feel whether everything is in place or not. If it’s not, we adjust the way energy circulates in the vineyard so that, concretely speaking, during tasting we have that little element that will later bring emotion to the wine.

It’s the same during vinification, we approach it by working on the connection between matter, energy, and light, ensuring that everything is aligned so that we have wines that vibrate at a high frequency, nourishing not only the body, but also the emotional and spiritual aspects of the human being.

How do you envision Champagne Franck Pascal evolving over time and engaging the next generation?

I feel that it's not up to me to make this decision. I believe things need to come from within the people involved moving forward. I've done my part of the journey, and if a transition happens, my role will be to support and guide, but not to replace or dictate anything. Again, I believe it's a decision that doesn't belong to me.

What legacy do you hope to leave to Champagne?

I never really set out to leave a particular legacy to Champagne, but despite that, quite a few winemakers have come through the estate for various reasons, so in a way, the legacy is already in motion. Even back when I had my blog where I shared my vision and my way of working, I had around 15,000 readers per day, so I was planting seeds in people’s minds.

I remember a vigneron neighbor once came to me and said, 'Franck, it’s impressive, when I listen to the younger generation speak today, they talk like you did 20 years ago.' So, in some way, just by trying to speak the truth, I know that some people felt challenged or even attacked. As a result, my messages were sometimes perceived as if I were some kind of guru. But still, there were people who heard what I was saying, who connected with that truth and integrated it into their own way of working.

We were among the first to make a 100% Meunier Champagne. We were also the first to make a Champagne without sulfur, and the first to make Brut Nature Champagne. All of that planted seeds. And now, there are young winemakers who come to the estate to taste and buy Champagne so they can go back to their families and say, "This is what I want to do."

Today, I even have winemakers asking me for advice on how to improve their work and make better quality wines. So, I believe a movement is already underway. Of course, it’s not just me, we’re a group of winemakers, and each of us brings a small piece of truth to the table, and together we help move things forward.

A legacy I would like to see is for the true value of Champagne to be brought to the forefront. And for me, the true value lies in its terroir, its climate, its geology, its people. It’s not about this fake luxury image or expensive wines, that’s just marketing.

What has been your most memorable champagne moment?

The moment I felt the most emotion with a champagne was at a friend’s house. We were traveling and happened to be passing near our friends, so we called them, and they invited us to come for dinner. We thought, “We can’t show up empty-handed,” so I said I’d bring dessert. This was in Issoire, where there’s an amazing pastry chef.

I arrived just as they were closing, the person was finishing cleaning the shop. I poked my head through the door and said, “I see you’re about to close, do you have anything left for dinner tonight?” The only thing left was a white chocolate and raspberry cake. I bought it.

At dessert time, we brought out the cake, and my friend said, “I’m going to get something for us.” He went down to the cellar and came back with a well-hidden bottle, we had no idea what it was. He poured us a glass of champagne, and the moment I tasted it, I got goosebumps all over. I thought, “Wow, this is a perfect pairing.”

And it turned out, it was one of our champagnes! A 2000 vintage, non-dosé, mostly Pinot Noir and Meunier. It was stunning. I never would have thought to pair a non-dosé champagne with dessert, it’s not something you’d do intuitively. But it worked beautifully, because this pastry chef makes very balanced, not overly sweet desserts.

The acidity of the raspberry and the creaminess of the filling created a beautiful bridge between the wine and the dessert, giving it a lovely texture. It was magnificent, almost in the same style as the champagne itself: a bit of acidity and a very pleasant texture for the mouthfeel.

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