After decades on the periphery of her family's Champagne domaine, Caroline Brun has taken the reins. With an unprecedented 2026 harvest behind her and a changing climate ahead, her first year has been anything but straightforward.
Caroline Brun was 55 when she was finally handed what she had wanted for most of her adult life: control of her family's historic domaine in Aÿ, Roger Brun, and the chance to make wines that reflect her own vision. “I've been begging to craft my own wine here in this family,” she says. “It has always been my dream.”
Her appointment breaks with generations of male leadership. When her brother Philippe departed in late 2025, the future of the business was thrown into doubt, with a sale a genuine possibility. Brun, who had built a career as an artist and spent 15 years working with Champagne Bollinger, was reluctant to abandon a life she loved. It was watching her parents struggle with the prospect of losing the domaine that changed her mind. “I respect my parents. I respect my ancestors,” she says. “If we can enjoy life the way we do, it's thanks to their sweat, their work.”
Returning to the domaine is as much an act of preservation as it is of reinvention.
Rethinking the power of Aÿ
Aÿ is one of Champagne's most celebrated Grand Cru villages for Pinot Noir. Its south-facing exposition encourages generous ripening, producing fruit of considerable concentration, depth and vinosity, and a reputation for powerful, structured wines, although its finest expressions can also possess remarkable elegance.
Roger Brun has traditionally leaned towards the more muscular reading of that terroir. Under Philippe's direction, the wines became particularly expressive, with pronounced fruit, substantial weight and, in some cuvées, relatively generous dosage. Brun is candid about wanting to change this, and has already lowered the dosage of the Grand Réserve from 12 grams per litre to nine grams in the 2026 vintage. “I don't want to lose the clientele of Roger Brun, so I have to do it progressively,” she says.
The aim is not to diminish Aÿ's natural generosity but to bring greater finesse, freshness and precision to it, a distinction likely to matter more as Pinot Noir reaches higher levels of ripeness in warmer seasons. “A good wine knows how to say hello, have a conversation, and then say goodbye,” she explains, describing balance as something that extends from the attack through to the finish. This observation resonates across the range which, at times, can be accompanied by weight, sweetness or oak that obscures the finer details.
For their prestige champagne, La Pelle, a single-vineyard 100% Pinot Noir from 67-year-old vines, she is reconsidering the role of oak, working with a former Bollinger cooper on different barrel formats and toasting regimes. She also intends to bring the vineyards into sharper focus, moving beyond broad village expressions towards the individual sectors and lieux-dits of Aÿ.
A baptism by fire in 2026
Taking over a family domaine after decades of established practice would have been challenge enough. Brun's first harvest at the helm fell in one of Champagne's most unusual growing seasons, the 2026 harvest, marked by exceptionally early and rapid ripening, high potential alcohol and compressed picking windows. For a region accustomed to balancing ripeness against the acidity and freshness that champagne depends on, the speed of development demanded close attention, and she was also taking on the operational and financial management of the business.
Extreme heat added to the pressure. Temperatures reached 42°C during harvest, forcing crews to start at five or six in the morning (sometimes earlier) and stop by midday. Brun subsequently bought lighting equipment so that picking could begin at 5am, when it was cooler. She also changed how labour is organised, engaging a contractor to manage the pickers in place of the family's longstanding seasonal workforce.
These are hardly glamorous decisions, but they illustrate what she has inherited: beyond the creative freedom of making her own wines lies the increasingly difficult task of sustaining an independent viticultural business in a changing climate. The vintage may prove formative as she considers how to preserve freshness and balance in fruit grown on Aÿ's warm, well-exposed slopes.
An artist's interpretation
Brun is planning more transformations. The company currently makes around ten cuvées, presented in an assortment of bottle shapes, colours and labels. Brun intends to reduce the range to five or six wines, simplify production and establish a coherent visual identity using her own artwork.
For her, art is not an unrelated pursuit but another expression of the same landscape. “I've made a bridge between what has built me, my roots, the vines ... my experience of storytelling,” she says. Her work, recognised within Champagne and increasingly internationally, draws on the materials, history and culture of her upbringing. Her years at Bollinger, hosting international wine professionals, chefs and collectors, also taught her how Champagne communicates identity and value, and she now intends to apply those lessons to her own domaine.
Independence at a price
Brun's succession reflects a wider challenge facing Champagne's independent growers. Rising production costs, labour shortages, climatic uncertainty and the expense of maintaining vineyard holdings are placing considerable strain on smaller family businesses, and she is acutely aware that the larger Houses have resources unavailable to producers like her. Her response is to differentiate through terroir, creativity and a stronger sense of identity.
She recalls an observation attributed to Claude Taittinger, that the future would belong to two camps: the big brands and the artists. “I am very glad to be an artist,” she says, “because you are going to remain free.”
With approximately three years of stock in the cellar, she has some breathing space, though the wines that fully express her philosophy may still be five or six years away. The significance, for now, is not simply that a woman has inherited a family domaine, but that Brun has acquired the creative authority to shape its future at a moment when Champagne itself is being forced to reconsider how it grows, makes and presents its wines.
After a lifetime of waiting, she has no intention of letting the opportunity pass.
