In 1974, Bernadette Grimaud took over her father’s Bouteville, Grande Champagne vineyards.This bottle contains 500 milliners of a barrel of the eaux-de-vie that she distilled from her very first grape harvest that same year. At the time, she worked 15 hectares of Ugni Blanc vines. During her career as a wine-grower and distiller she went on to add three more hectares to the vineyards she inherited from her father, Gabriel, who, likewise, had followed in his own father’s footsteps.
Pierre Grimaud, Bernadette’s grandfather, had come to the Charente from the neighboring Deux-Sèvres department with his four brothers, in order to repopulate the Cognac region after the Phylloxera crisis forced many farmers off their land. In addition to tending his livestock, Pierre decided to replant grafted vines.