History: In 1858, Madame Louise Pommery took over as head of Pommery & Greno after the death of her husband. She based the expansion of her House on the creation of wines unlike any others, with one constant demand: quality pushed to the extreme. Well aware of how important the grapes’ origin was to the quality of her wines, over the years she built a collection of the finest vineyards in all of Champagne.

In matters of taste she was ahead of her time. It was she who created Pommery Nature in 1874, the first brut champagne to meet with commercial success, thereby breaking with the tradition of very sweet wine. A woman in a man’s world, she imprinted her personality on her champagnes. The purity and the finesse of Pommery wines perpetuate this legacy.

Another innovation, which would have long-term consequences perhaps as important as her Brut Champagne, was constructing a grand estate to accommodate visitors in Reims. She built an elaborate chateau in the middle of town, an English chateau in a nod to the English market. Louise Pommery was the first person to intentionally create and market wine tourism. Over the course of the next three decades, until her death in 1890, she transformed the modest business into one of the most powerful and physically dramatic houses in Champagne.