Champagne Lallement Massonnot à Coulommes-la-Montagne
Vine passion over 100 years
The origin
The Lallement family
The family history goes back to the early 20th century in Bouilly, where the Lallement family planted their first vines on the slopes of the Montagne de Reims. Until the 1980's, Jean Lallement, just like his father and grand-father before him, farmed his vineyards and sold his grapes to the co-operative of Courmas.
His son Francis worked with him at the farm. Year after year, he acquired the essential savoir-faire and rigour of his father, necessary for the vines to produce high-quality grapes.
The Massonnot family
It was in the midst of the "roaring twenties" that Aimé Massonnot made a debut in winegrowing. He naturally passed his passion on to his son Michel who took over the winegrowing estate in 1954.
From father to daughter - Anne-Marie decided to follow in her father Michel's footsteps. So she helped with the farm and took part in tending to the vineyard.
The Lallement-Massonnot union
In 1978, the wedding of Anne-Marie and Francis was celebrated. When Francis started heading the farm in 1981, along with his spouse, they created the Lallement-Massonnot brand together. Their common wish was to promote and highlight the superior quality of the Premier Cru terroir by farming their vineyards with rigour and passion because they wanted to be reflection of their Terroir.
The call of the vine
And so Xavier Lallement is now at the head of the family estate. He is the 5th generation of winegrowers of his family.
And yet he had first chosen another path. When young, he took an Engineer at Telecom ParisTech studying engineering with success. He then worked for about ten years for large banking and industrial groups.
That is when he met his wife Marie. She had studied at a superior business school called EDC and the University of Cergy Pontoise, got her diplomas, and then worked with Deloitte, a major audit company also providing financial consultancy.
Both their professional careers seemed all mapped out, far from the family estate, but Xavier's fondness for his ancestors' land was catching up with him. In 2015, they decided to return to Champagne in order to take over the estate and the vineyard.
Destiny
