So Katy, you came on board following Olivier Dupré’s retirement in 2024 having worked in the FMCG sector, but never before in wine. What did you think would be the biggest challenge in switching to the wine world?
Honestly, I expected the product complexity to be the steepest curve – the technical vocabulary, appellation rules, vintage logic. What actually surprised me was how emotionally people relate to wine. In most FMCG categories, consumers are loyal to a function. In wine, they're loyal to a story, an emotion, a moment, a person. That changes everything about how you communicate and how you share the passion.
You oversee both the Champagne house Alfred Gratien and the Loire sparkling production at Gratien Meyer. How do you split your time between the two?
Imperfectly, and by necessity. Alfred Gratien is in Épernay, Gratien Meyer is in Saumur – they're not a quick commute from each other. In practice, I'm guided by where the critical decisions are at any given moment. The two houses have very different rhythms: Champagne is more export-driven and brand-intensive, the Loire is more production-complex, with a broader portfolio of wines and a strong retail footprint in France. I've stopped trying to split my time evenly and started going where I'm most needed.
How long did it take for wine to get under your skin?
Faster than I expected! About six months in, I caught myself genuinely caring about harvest conditions in a way that had nothing to do with volume forecasts. I have just passed the WSET level 2 but mostly, I've learned from the people around me, which I think is actually a much richer education.
Our winemakers, Nicolas Jaeger at Alfred Gratien and Pierre Charon at Gratien Meyer were extraordinarily generous with their time and their knowledge. Neither of them had any obligation to slow down for a new MD who didn't know the difference between tirage and disgorgement. They chose to. That says something about who they are.
What struck me early on was that they didn't just explain the process, they explained the ‘why’ behind every decision, the trade-offs, the moments where craft and instinct take over from procedure.
‘they explained… the moments where craft and instinct take over from procedure.’
Tasting with them is an education in itself. You start to understand not just what's in the glass but what the winemaker was trying to achieve and whether they got there. That's a completely different way of paying attention. I still ask a lot of questions. I suspect I always will. But I ask better ones now, and I know enough to understand the answers.
What are the biggest challenges to the sparkling wine market today and where are the greatest opportunities?
The challenge is structural: consumers are drinking less but trading up, which sounds like an opportunity until you realise it compresses volume across the whole category. Prosecco grew enormously on convenience and price, and that space is now crowded. Champagne faces a correction after two exceptional post-pandemic years.
The opportunity today is Crémant. And I say that not just as someone who produces it, I say it as someone who arrived in this industry without preconceptions and looked at the quality-to-price equation with fresh eyes.
Gratien Meyer has been making Crémant de Loire in Saumur for over 160 years. We work with the same traditional method as Champagne, second fermentation in the bottle, hand-harvested fruit, serious ageing on lees. The result is a wine of genuine complexity and finesse, at a price point that makes it one of the most honest propositions in the sparkling category. And yet it remains, in much of the world, a secret.
That is simultaneously our frustration and our greatest asset. The consumers who discover Gratien Meyer with the right context, the right occasion, the right glass almost always come back. The Wine Society's members know this better than most. The work ahead is scaling that discovery without losing what makes it special: the authenticity, the Loire terroir, the fact that this is a house that has never chased a trend in its life. If I had to bet on where the sparkling wine market finds its next chapter, it isn't in a new category. It's in consumers finally catching up with what Crémant has always been.
What has been the biggest area of focus since joining the company and what changes (if any) have you brought in?
Brand clarity. Both houses had strong identities that weren't being expressed with enough confidence externally. My first priority was to sharpen what each brand stands for, not just for marketing purposes, but so that every commercial decision we make is coherent. We've also done significant work on production planning and capacity, which is less glamorous but genuinely strategic. You cannot build a brand on wine you can't consistently supply.
What exciting projects do you have in place for us to look forward to? What will they mean for the fans of your wines?
There are so many to choose from… One I'm really excited about is the relaunch of Alfred Gratien, which we're targeting for 2027. It's a full brand repositioning, a new visual identity, new bottle design, a simultaneous launch across multiple markets. The ambition is to give Alfred Gratien the visibility it deserves as one of Champagne's most distinctive houses. For fans of the wine, nothing changes in the glass and Nicolas's winemaking philosophy is intact. What changes is how the world sees it.
For Gratien Meyer, we're doing equally serious work on brand positioning ahead of the same timeline. The relaunch will give that story the expression it deserves. New brand identity, clearer positioning, and a much stronger international narrative. We're also developing our wine experiences: Saumur is one of the most beautiful wine regions in France, our cellars are extraordinary, and we want the people who visit to leave understanding that what they've just experienced is not a lesser version of Champagne. It is something different, and in its own way, just as special.
Both houses have a long history (much of it shared with The Wine Society) – is overseeing an historic organisation any different from more modern businesses? Is there a dichotomy between preserving heritage and ensuring a long future?
Yes, but not in the way people assume. The difference isn't conservatism versus innovation, it’s that the weight of continuity is real and legitimate. When you make decisions at a house that has been producing wine for 160 years, you are genuinely accountable to something larger than the current sales or trends. That's not a constraint, it's a compass. The dichotomy between heritage and future is mostly a false one. Nicolas Jaeger makes wine the way he does because it produces the best result, not out of nostalgia. The craft is the future.
The weight of continuity is real and legitimate.
We can’t talk to our growers without mentioning the challenges of climate change and how this is affecting winemaking. How is this impacting the teams in the Loire and Champagne and is it very different for each of them?
They're different problems. In Champagne, the warming trend has extended the ripening window and improved consistency and harvests that would have been marginal thirty years ago are now good. The challenge is managing acidity as temperatures rise, because acidity is fundamental to what makes great Champagne. In the Loire, we're seeing more vintage variability and pressure on the freshness profile that defines Crémant de Loire at its best. Both teams are adapting in the vineyard, in the timing of harvest decisions, in how we think about reserve stocks. It's a live problem, not a future one.
We read a lot in the wine press about the difficulties around temporary labour forces in the production of wine, particularly around vintage time and when it can become very hot. How are your teams managing this?
It's one of the most serious operational challenges in our industry and I think it deserves a direct answer rather than a diplomatic one. Harvest is physically demanding, the windows are compressed, and when temperatures spike it creates real risk for people. We take that seriously with rest protocols, hydration, adjusted working hours when conditions require it. Attracting and retaining good seasonal workers is also genuinely competitive. The houses that treat people well build loyalty year on year.
What about you – what do you like to do in your downtime (if you have any)? I’m guessing you’re now pretty keen on wine (and perhaps you always were) – do you have a favourite bottle or wine-related memory?
When I find downtime, I'm at home with my husband, our dog, our cat, and as much green space as possible. I don't need much to be happy. My husband and I have a ritual where every week, we share a bottle. Sometimes it's something we know well, a wine that feels like coming home. Sometimes it's something neither of us has tried before, a deliberate small adventure. There's room for both. Not every bottle needs to be a discovery, and not every evening needs to be comfortable. That alternation is, I think, a reasonable philosophy for life as much as for wine.
As for a wine memory, I have one that I come back to often. Not long after I joined, a bottle appeared at the end of an evening. A 1981 Alfred Gratien, my birth year. Anyone who knows Champagne knows that 1981 had a difficult reputation: frost in April, rain at harvest, most houses had declined to release a vintage at all. The expectation, if there was one, was that we were about to drink something that had long passed its moment. A curiosity, perhaps, but not a serious wine.
What came out of that bottle was completely different. It was alive. Complex in a way that stopped the conversation, there was dried fruit, something almost honeyed, an acidity that had held everything together across four decades, I didn't have the vocabulary to fully articulate what I was tasting. I'm not sure it mattered. What I understood, viscerally, was that this house had made something in a difficult year that most people had written off and it had outlasted every expectation. That's the kind of story that gets under your skin. It got under mine.
Tell us one surprising fact about yourself.
I came into this role having never worked in wine, which most people in the industry find either alarming or refreshing, depending on their disposition. I'm pleased to report the wine has not suffered.
And, finally, for all the young women out there with aspirations to get into business or the wine trade – what piece of advice can you offer them?
Don't wait to feel ready. The people who progress are not the ones who had every credential lined up before they put their hand up, they're the ones who backed themselves slightly ahead of certainty. The wine trade in particular rewards genuine curiosity and the willingness to learn in public. Find people who are excellent at their craft and get close to them. Ask real questions.
But the piece of advice I feel most strongly about is this: help each other. Genuinely, actively, without keeping score. I have been the beneficiary of women who opened doors, made introductions, said my name in rooms I wasn't in yet, and I try to do the same. There is still a tendency, in industries where women remain underrepresented at senior levels, to treat the few seats at the table as scarce. They are not scarce. The more women who get there, the more seats appear. That mindset-shift matters enormously.
Be willing to work hard, really hard, not performatively hard. There is no shortcut in a business built on craft, relationships, and long cycles. The wine trade in particular has a long memory. Reputation accumulates slowly and is spent quickly. Show up consistently, do what you say you will do, and take the unglamorous work as seriously as the visible work. Nobody gets to skip that part.
