🍾 Pommery

Pommery is a Champagne house in Reims. Wikidata gives 1858 as its founding year. According to the house, that was when Madame Pommery, after her husband’s death, took over the firm Pommery et Greno and began to expand it, relying on wine quality and on the house’s own vineyards.

According to the house, in 1874 it created Pommery Nature, the first brut Champagne to achieve commercial success, at a time when very sweet wines prevailed. From July 1868, old chalk pits (crayères) in Reims were turned into cellars: 18 km of galleries 30 m underground. The Clos Pompadour, 25 ha of vines inside the estate walls, gives a cuvée of the same name sold only in magnums. The range also includes Brut, Apanage, Louise and Pop.

Champagne is a wine with a protected designation of origin (PDO). The bubbles come only from a second fermentation in the bottle, the wine is aged for at least 15 months before sale (36 for vintage), and all production takes place only within the delimited area. Pommery is a brand; Champagne is the name of a place.

Why it matters to you. Today “brut” is not just a style but a term defined by EU rules: no more than 12 g of sugar per litre. Millésime (vintage) and blanc de blancs are defined too, while “Louise” or “Apanage” are the house’s own names. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.