Lucien Crochet

Winemaking is deeply rooted in the tradition of Lucien Crochet. Both of Gilles Crochet’s grandfathers, André Crochet and Lucien Picard, were winegrowers. In the early 1950s, Lucien Picard was one of the pioneers to bottle Sancerre in the region and sell them in Paris. Gilles’ father, Lucien Crochet, merged the two estates together and developed relationships with the finest restaurants in Paris and began to export their wines. Today, Gilles and his wife Laurence, also a daughter of a Sancerre grower, oversee the estate.

To develop his own vision of viticulture, Gilles decided to leave Sancerre in 1978 to pursue his university studies in oenology in Dijon. After that, he returned to the family estate in Sancerre in 1983. Since then, with each vintage, Gilles has been vinifying 7 or 8 cuvées and continues to experiment with new techniques.