Néret-Vély

Originally, nothing predestined the Néret family to the world of Champagne, except for a very small piece of vine of 20 ares received by Carole Néret’s mother as an inheritance.

The late 1980s marked a prosperous period for the Champagne vineyards, which were in full expansion. New land was reclaimed to expand the AOC cultivated area and the number of lovers of these wines grew worldwide. At that time, Carole’s father was a dairy farmer in Vauchamps, on the Champagne plain, while her mother worked as an accountant. But the desire is there and it is together that the Néret couple embark on this crazy adventure. The challenge is all the greater as the family does not have the experience of past generations of winegrowers. They have to build everything themselves with small means and a lot of perseverance.

From the beginning, the Néret family wanted to produce their own wines and therefore decided to leave the cooperative that previously managed the 20 ares of vines inherited from Carole’s mother. However, it takes more than a few vines to create a winery from scratch. So they rent family areas of vines, buy forests in the appellation area that they clear and work the land without counting the hours or the effort.

The results are clearly visible to someone who had never produced wine before. In about ten years, the Néret Vély champagne vineyard has grown from 20 ares to 5.5 hectares!

A range of surprising champagnes

In 1985, Néret Vély champagne produced its first bottles with a confidential selection of cuvées. One must not forget that the goal is a big one. It was up to the family to self-finance all the investments involved in launching a wine cellar from scratch and, for this, they had to take their pick from the banks more than once. In the end, all these efforts paid off to reach an ideal production of 40,000 bottles per year.

Today, the house is experimenting with new ways of caring for a terroir created with difficulty. Among the various innovations employed by the family, the most visible is undoubtedly the use of horses for part of the ploughing. This traditional method makes it possible, among other things, to aerate the soil much better than mechanical work with a tractor would.

This time-consuming work of creating and maintaining a vineyard also involves perfecting the winemaking process. The family was helped by oenologists such as Sébastien Goulard, Georges Blanck or Franck Wolfe to rework their blends in a different way. This is how the current Néret Vély Champagne range was born, which combines confidential oenological and single-vineyard specialities with the classic Champagne offering.