Claude Cazals

The house was founded in 1897 by Ernest Cazals, a cooper who came from the Hérault, married a woman from Champagne and settled in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger.

His descendant Claude Cazals did something that changed the work of the whole appellation: in 1969 he invented the gyropalette.

It is worth understanding what that machine solves. After the second fermentation the lees are spread through the bottle and must be brought down to the neck so they can be expelled at disgorgement. By hand, turning bottle by bottle in the pupitres, riddling takes up to eight weeks. A gyropalette does the same in three or four days.

Claude never patented the invention. Half of Champagne uses one today, and the original still sits in the house's cellar.

Delphine Cazals, the fourth generation, runs the estate: nine hectares across four communes, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Oger, Vertus and Villeneuve.

In Oger they hold the Clos Cazals, one of only twenty-one clos in Champagne and the largest of them. It was Delphine who in 1995 petitioned the Comité Champagne to have the parcel recognised as a clos.