Isabelle Champart

Isabelle Champart originally trained in Geography in Paris. Her husband, Matthieu, was from a farming family in Champagne. When the couple took over a family estate in St. Chinian in 1976, the fields were crowned with old vines, but they needed work.

The Champarts got going on renovations, and also planted an additional 12 HA. For the next decade they sold grapes to the coop, but started bottling wine under their own label in 1988. Matthieu labored in the vineyard, while Isabelle made the wine, ran the cellar, and negotiated sales.

Mas Champart, in the southern part of the appellation, is blessed with a mix of limestone-clay, marl, and sandstone. It is steep and surrounded by forest and scrub, and the gnarled old vines make handwork obligatory. Production has been organic since 2019, and the wines are always old-style, hands-off, with minimal sulfite addition. The estate retains its old cement tanks.

I met Isabelle on my first visit to Languedoc, in 2014. At the time, the vines ringing the estate were 75 and 35 years old; a decade later, they endure. I was impressed by the wines’ mix of power and finesse, the silkiness she’d coaxed from the scrubby landscape. Isabelle struck me as matter of fact, quiet, reserved but also warm. Deeply skilled, and deeply in love with her domaine.

Isabelle retired in 2021, and the estate’s wines are made by a fresh talent, Noémie Vidil, whose portrait I’ve also featured.