“Champagne Telmont, together with its partner wine-growers, has set its sights on producing 100% organic Champagne, ensuring a completely sustainable production lifecycle in the coming years. From protecting biodiversity on its land, to using 100% renewable electricity, Champagne Telmont is determined to radically lower its environmental footprint, making me proud to join as an investor.” – Leonardo DiCaprio
The story of Telmont is as multi-layered as the elegant Champagnes it produces. The brand, whose majority shareholder is Rémy-Cointreau, has attracted investment from US actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a close friend of CEO and fellow shareholder Ludovic du Plessis, who had an ambitious vision to buy and run a Champagne house that would be a byword for high quality and, crucially, for sustainable farming.
Du Plessis was seeking a family legacy, which he found in fourth-generation winemaker Bertrand Lhôpital’s estate, where importantly he both grows the grapes and makes the wine. He was also looking for land to accompany his purchase – Telmont has 25 hectares dedicated to wine growing.
In Champagne, many houses would tick these boxes (though few are for sale), but du Plessis was looking for something rarer still – a house focused on organic agriculture and production. That was no easy task: of the 34,000 hectares in the Champagne growing region, only 5% is devoted to organic farming.
In Bertrand Lhôpital and Telmont, du Plessis found gold, and in his long-time employer Rémy-Cointreau (where he had overseen the growth of Louis XIII Cognac), a partner to help make his dream a reality.
Lhôpital, who took over the business from his father in 1999, had already made a shift in his search to make better wine. He recognised long before many others that the secret to this lay in spending more time in the vineyards than in the cellars. He began to learn about and understand organic agriculture, introducing biodynamic practices. In short, he had to relearn how to farm.
Over the years Lhôpital began to apply for the relevant certification, and today the estate (majority owned by Rémy Cointreau since 2020) is almost fully organic. Alongside the 25 hectares of its own land, a further 75 hectares is owned by partner wine growers, and 60% of these are also fully organic.
By 2031, 100% of Telmont’s wine grower partners will be certified in organic agriculture, underscoring the brand’s leadership in organic production of Champagne.
Speaking in Paris to The Moodie Davitt Report recently, Champagne Telmont Global Marketing & Business Development Director Justin Meade outlines the vision, summed up by its tag line ‘In the name of Mother Nature’.
“The vision is to become 100% organic and to build a fully sustainable Champagne house,” says Meade.
“Let’s be clear: what we do is also related to the undeniable climate change we are seeing. We used to harvest in October, now it’s in August. The facts on the ground mean we have to adapt and to do our part to change things for the planet.”
What does organic mean in viniculture today and in particular to the Telmont project, we ask?
Meade says: “It means using no herbicides, no pesticides, no fungicides and no chemical fertilisers and to be fully transparent we place all of this on the label too.”
In that sense, he adds, it is akin to farming pre-World War Two.
“What we call conventional agriculture, with the use of chemicals, is in fact less than 100 years old. Before that we had 10,000 years of farming without this influence.
“People transitioned to herbicides and pesticides in good faith and it felt like progress. But now we know the impact it can have on the soil and on health and so our position is to adopt organic agriculture and to have a regenerative impact on the soil. It is full radical transparency; this is not all about our vineyard but the eco-system around it.”
And Telmont is moving fast. The target to have all wine growers transition to fully organic methods by 2031 is ambitious to say the least.
“It takes at least four years to convert to organic, plus you have at least three years of ageing. So if you started now to farm a hectare of land using organic methods it would be 2030 at the earliest before you had product.
“Converting your land to organic is not easy. For the first three years you can grow but you are not certified. When you sign a contract with Telmont, for those conversion years Rémy Cointreau offers those growers financial support.”
Despite this Telmont is welcoming more and more growers each year to the movement. That is partly due to younger generations taking over family estates, and who see Telmont as a project partner.
“The community that works with us has to want to do this,” says Meade. “We are humble and we don’t dictate to our partners. There are challenges involved. Any change you make, you do it in the face of nature, which means nothing is certain.
“You have to relearn how to farm and that is like learning a new language. You will have good years and bad years. In 2021, a year in which we had rain at almost unprecedented levels, the harvest was badly hit. The authorised yield in Champagne was 10,000kg per hectare, and the conventional harvest using chemicals produced 6,000kg that year; we and our growers produced an average of 900kg.
“But the past two years have been very good by contrast. In general you are talking about lower yield but better quality. The grapes have better concentration, more acidity and more complexity and that translates into the final product. And ultimately, what we want to do is to make better wine.”
The goal of ‘full radical transparency’ is one that Meade returns to time and again, and it is evident from farm to glass.
It includes biodiversity across the land, with grass growing wild in the vineyards where often it would not.
It meant switching from bespoke bottles of 900g each in weight to classic Champagne bottles at 835g each from April 2021 – and later designing a new bottle with the manufacturer to reduce this to the lightest bottle of Champagne at 800g.
It also meant banning the use of gift boxes and limited editions. Meade says: “On packaging, sometimes we are too wary of change. It’s fair to ask whether we would lose sales when we removed packaging, but we are seeing our sales soar, even in markets where gifting and gift-wrapped packaging is a ritual.
“Once you explain that you are stopping the non-essential, people understand. The lifespan of a gift box is mere seconds. At some stage people will demand no more packaging. And we can tell the story on the bottle. We open the recipe book with all of the relevant information right there, including the number of bottles produced, each one numbered, with every year that has gone into the Champagne listed – and that is highly unusual in Champagne.”
That drive for full transparency also now includes shipping only by sea, not by air.
“We simply unplugged,” says Meade. “It’s then our responsibility to plan ahead in our supply chain, to get our Champagne to the right place at the right time. At home our production facility runs on renewable energy, all vehicles are electric and all tractors were retro-fitted to run on biofuel.
“All of these decisions you make and then you move on without looking back. But the impact on your emissions of all of these actions is massive.
“When you want to be sustainable in life, there are things you have to simply stop doing. It’s not easy but that philosophy of organic in the vineyard we need to apply to everything else we do.”
With a relatively modest production of 350-400,000 bottles per year currently, Telmont is selective about where it distributes, and travel retail is identified as a key channel.
Meade says: “We focus on a number of key markets. The USA and Japan are key Champagne markets. The UK and France are also important plus there are others with big on-trade channels such as Switzerland, Italy, Spain and others.
“In distribution terms, we focus on the on-trade, and in the off-trade high-end wine merchants along with airports.”
(The main article continues after the panel below)
The birth of TelmontTelmont was born soon after the 1911 ‘Champagne riots’ that engulfed the region, and whose consequences have lasted to this day. At the time, Champagne growing was hit hard by the advance of phylloxera and by poor weather, which delivered a meagre harvest, leading some houses to buy stocks from outside the Champagne region. This move led to fury among many growers who dumped much of this ‘imported’ wine, amid conflict with the winemakers – prompting the government to send in the military to calm unrest. Ultimately, the growers won, sealing an agreement that the region should be delineated as the only one in which true Champagne could be made.  Current Cellar Master and Head of Viticulture Bertrand Lhôpital’s great-grandfather Henri was part of the growers’ movement, deciding that he would not sell his grapes to any house that did not value them. This prompted him to begin his own wine-making house, named after one of the most beautiful and precious parcels of land on his estate, Telmont. |
Telmont recently began distribution at Paris Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports with Extime Duty Free, and at Nice Airport with Lagardère Travel Retail, the latter move to coincide with the brand’s support of the Cannes International Film Festival.
For travel retail, the Réserve de la Terre expression is present, priced at just over €70 duty paid, with more organic lines set to join it in future.
“Travel retail is a milestone channel for us and it’s an interesting place to show our brand and to bring an experience to our clients,” says Meade.
“The organic category is new in Champagne and a segment we need to grow together. We were at TFWA World Exhibition last year and our story generated much excitement. We see room for growth in this category in travel retail and we are happy to take leadership.”
Other partnerships help amplify the message.
Leonardo DiCaprio, a friend of Ludovic du Plessis’ for almost two decades, was introduced to the brand and offered to invest. “He plays a big part in telling the story and it helps us recruit the younger generation of wine grower and build our audience,” notes Meade.
The Cannes International Film Festival (of which Rémy Cointreau has been an official supplier over many years) also lends exposure, as do relationships with The Green Carpet Fashion Awards and fundraising for climate action foundations such as Re:wild.
While Telmont has high-profile investors, its management continues to think of the venture as a start-up – and with 16 people it remains modestly staffed.
“Everyone plays multiple roles,” says Meade. “You might one day be in hospitality but the next you are weighing the grapes. We recruit people who are willing to wear multiple hats, and who are excited about the project and about environmental preservation. We are not activists, but it makes sense for those who are involved in terms of the lives they lead.
“We try to show you can be sustainable and radical but also grow commercially. And while we are still in a launch phase sales have been beyond expectations to date. What we take pride in is that all of us are using our personal convictions for a professional project.
“Sustainability is not just about what not to do – rather it can be a conduit for innovation and you can do it in a fun, creative way. It also chimes with the values of consumers today and in the future. What matters in the end about this transformation project is our obsession to make great wine.” ✈
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Tasting Telmont
