Pol Roger

History

1. 1849

   A seventeen-year-old from Aÿ

   Pol Roger, the son of a notary from Aÿ, sold his first wine on 2 January 1849, to a merchant from his home village. He was forced into business by the illness of his father, who could no longer run his practice. In 1851 he moved the firm to Épernay, and from 1855 he focused on dry Brut, because that was the Champagne the English liked. He died of pneumonia in December 1899.

2. 1900

   The night the cellars collapsed

   On 23 February 1900, two months after the founder's death, part of the cellars and buildings collapsed. His son Maurice woke at two in the morning to a rumbling like thunder. Buried under the rubble were 500 barrels holding almost the entire 1899 harvest and about 1.5 million bottles, and the street sank by four metres. Neighbours helped the house, above all Moët & Chandon and Mercier. That same year the sons, Maurice and Georges, received permission to change their surname to Pol-Roger.

3. 1912-1959

   The voice and the nose

   The brothers divided the work: Maurice was the “voice” of the firm and handled sales, Georges was the “nose”, made the wine and kept an eye on the finances. In 1912 Maurice became mayor of Épernay and was still mayor during the German occupation of the town in 1914. In 1933 the house opened new cellars on the avenue de Champagne. Georges died in 1950, Maurice in 1959.

4. 1944-1965

   Odette and Churchill

   On 12 November 1944, at a lunch given by Ambassador Duff Cooper in Paris, Maurice's daughter-in-law, Odette Pol-Roger, met Winston Churchill. Pol Roger 1928 was served. From then on she sent him a case of that vintage every year for his birthday. Churchill never managed to visit the house, but he called its address “the most drinkable address in the world”. After his death in 1965 the Brut labels for the British market were given a black border.

5. 1984

   A cuvée for the prime minister

   In 1984, at Blenheim Palace, the house presented Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill from the 1975 vintage, released only in magnums. It replaced P.R. Réserve Spéciale, made from the 1971 to the 1988 vintage, at the top of the range. Earlier, in 1961, the house had introduced a vintage rosé, and a few years later a Blanc de Blancs. In 2001 the medium-sweet Rich was added, and in 2007 Pure, with no added sugar.

6. 2018-2026

   A new winery and a new chairman

   In April 2018 Damien Cambres succeeded Dominique Petit, chef de cave for 19 years. While digging the foundations for a new building on the site of the collapsed cellars, the two of them found bottles from 1887-1898. In 2024, for the house's 175th anniversary and the 150th anniversary of Churchill's birth, Pol Roger opened a new 50-million-euro facility: 18,000 m2 on four levels, resting on 298 piles. In June 2026 it was announced that Laurent d'Harcourt, chairman since 2013, would be succeeded by the end of the year by Hadrien Mouflard of Champagne Ayala.

People

Curiosities

1. Churchill named his favourite racehorse Pol Roger. The horse won the Black Prince Stakes at Kempton Park on 2 June 1953, the day of Elizabeth II's coronation, and Churchill told Odette by telegram. source
2. After Churchill's death in 1965, Pol Roger added a black border to the Brut labels shipped to Great Britain. source
3. When the Great Storm of 1987 brought down trees at Chartwell, Churchill's country house, the Pol-Roger family paid for a large part of the new planting. source
4. In 2018 sonar detected, in the rubble of the cellars that collapsed in 1900, a recess holding more than a hundred bottles. Only 23 were drinkable; the first were opened in autumn 2019. source
5. A month after the disaster at Pol Roger, the cellars of the neighbouring house of Godart-Roger collapsed in a similar way. At that point the Pol-Roger brothers gave up trying to dig out their wines. source
6. Chef de cave Damien Cambres worked for 15 years at Nicolas Feuillatte, the largest cooperative brand in Champagne. source
7. Pol Roger belongs to Primum Familiae Vini, an association of family wineries, and held a Royal Warrant as supplier of Champagne to Queen Elizabeth II. source
8. rumour It is said that Churchill drank more than 40,000 bottles of Pol Roger in his lifetime. The figure is repeated by, among others, a member of staff at the house's British subsidiary, but no source documents it. source