When Justine and Marie Charlemagne returned to Épernay in 2023, they didn’t simply come back to a Champagne estate. They came home.
I met the sisters at one of the picturesque cottages in the heart of the Côte des Blancs, where they are now balancing the realities of early motherhood with the responsibility of steering a flourishing family Champagne estate. The building itself tells that story. Once their childhood home, it has evolved into the visitor centre and operational heart of the estate - a place to sleep during harvest, to share meals during bottling, and to gather the team when days stretch long and pressure runs high.
It is a space that feels both practical and symbolic: a home reclaimed, a legacy re-inhabited.
Photo credit: Anthony Dorfmann©2025
Rewriting the Rules of Succession
Marie and Justine Charlemagne, are the only children of Philippe Charlemagne who, at just 58, handed over the reins after harvest 2023 - despite some initial reservations. “Our father initially said there was no room for both of us! But we told him, it’s both of us or nothing,” says Justine. “He was concerned about siblings working together but there are many examples of others being successful; Bérêche, Egly-Ouriet, Jacques Selosse’s children.”
In Champagne, where multi-generational estates are the norm, succession has traditionally passed from father to son. The physical demands of vineyard work and cellar labour have long shaped that reality. “It’s something we have to deal with as women in this industry,” Justine reflects. “The physical demands of vineyard work during pregnancy are real, so having each other makes all the difference.”
This reality has forged a partnership defined by complementarity rather than hierarchy - Marie leading vineyard and winemaking decisions, Justine shaping brand, communication and long-term positioning.
As the sixth generation in charge, Justine and Marie usher in this pivotal moment of change. Their approach has not been about reinvention for its own sake, but about continuity with intent - listening first, inhabiting the space fully, and allowing the next chapter to unfold with purpose rather than haste.
They're privileged to more than 15 hectares of vineyards, primarily in the Côte des Blancs, located mostly in the grand cru villages of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Oger. Additional parcels are in Mancy, Cuis, Glannes and the Côte de Sézanne. Chardonnay accounts for nearly 90% of plantings, and the balance is made up by Pinot Noir. For its Grand Cru cuvées, fruit comes exclusively from their finest parcels - Chétillon, Coullemets, Vaucherots, Mont-Joly and Aillerand du Midi - where the average vine age is around 45 years.
The transition has meant a quiet but meaningful shift for the family business, which has roots dating back to 1892. For five generations, the Charlemagne estate followed the traditional Champagne model of patriarchal succession, passed from father to son. The region reveres lineage, honours repetition, and measures progress in decades rather than seasons. Yet behind many of its most enduring smaller producers lies a quieter truth; survival depends not on resisting change, but on knowing precisely when - and how - to introduce it.
For the Charlemagne sisters, though the timing was right, it couldn’t have been more challenging.
The 2024 growing season - the first they consider fully theirs - was one of the most chaotic Champagne has faced in recent years. Relentless rainfall, disease pressure and reduced yields tested even the most established producers. “If you survive 2024, you can survive anything,” became a refrain across the region. However, what emerged was not volume, but precision; small quantities of wines defined by clarity, tension and quiet confidence.
For Marie, trained as an agronomy engineer and deeply embedded in the vineyard, the year reinforced a core belief. “You truly understand terroir in years like this,” she explains. “Not just through soil, but through how the vines respond under stress.” The contrast between Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and the Côte de Sézanne - where the house also farms - was stark. Le Mesnil’s deep chalk soils proved markedly more resilient, while Sézanne’s heavier pressures revealed themselves early through mildew and vine fatigue.
Restraint in the Cellar, Time as Structure
The sister’s philosophy around terroir is inseparable from restraint in the cellar. Winemaking is deliberately understated, shaped around long ageing, stainless steel vinification and minimal intervention. “We believe the work is done before the wine ever reaches the cellar,” Marie says. “If the vineyard is healthy and the fruit is right, the winemaking should be quiet.”
Most cuvées are vinified exclusively in stainless steel, a conscious decision designed to preserve purity, energy and line. “Stainless steel allows us to respect the verticality of Le Mesnil,” she explains. “The freshness, the tension, the mineral expression - those qualities don’t need embellishment.” Where oak is used, it is sparing and purposeful, reserved for select cuvées and employed not for flavour, but for texture and gentle micro-oxygenation. “It’s never about tasting the barrel,” she says. “It’s about structure, depth and how the wine ages over time.”
Ageing is also not rushed. Non-vintage cuvées rest far longer than is commercially required, allowing young Chardonnay from Le Mesnil to soften and find balance. “Le Mesnil has a lot of energy,” Marie notes. “Time is essential. Without it, the wines can feel too sharp. With it, they gain depth and calm.” Some cuvées spend eight, nine, even ten years on lees before release, reinforcing the belief that longevity is not a marketing claim, but a structural outcome.
That structural patience extends into the vineyard. Marie speaks passionately about vine health, sap flow and longevity - concepts she believes precede terroir itself. Old vines planted in the 1940s consistently outperform younger plantings, a reality she attributes not only to genetics, but to historical farming practices. “You can have the best terroir in the world,” she says, “but if the vine is not healthy, nothing will happen in the glass.”
Sharpening the Focus
Alongside this deeply technical approach sits Justine’s perspective - shaped by years working in luxury marketing and Champagne brand strategy, notably within Rare Champagne. Her role is not to soften the estate’s identity, but to clarify it. “We know the wines are strong,” she says. “But the way we present them hasn’t always reflected that.”
Change, however, has been deliberately phased. Their first year was spent listening - to the team, to the inherited wines resting in the cellar, to the rhythms already established. “You can redesign a label,” Justine says. “You can’t redesign wine overnight.” A comprehensive brand refresh is now underway, aimed at aligning the house’s visual identity with what is already happening in the glass. New labels, refined range architecture and a clearer hierarchy is beginning to emerge - modern but anchored firmly in place.
Looking forward, the sisters are also beginning to refine the estate’s expression of site. Alongside its established cuvées, Guy Charlemagne is gradually introducing more clearly defined single-vineyard bottlings, parcels that speak with distinct voices within Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. These wines are not designed as statements of prestige, but as transparent reflections of place - subtle differences in exposure, soil depth and vine age revealed through the same restrained winemaking lens.
Marie and Justine’s approach to modernisation has not been a rejection of heritage, but a sharpening of focus. Five generations laid the groundwork. Two sisters are now shaping what comes next.
