About one year later Alain finally decided to step into it. Stopped his career as a manager of the French daughter company of the English Higgins Group. Specialised in potatoes he’d operated all over Europe for more than 15 years. For a long time with this wish to return to the roots, the family vineyards, once he’d seen and learned enough about the world of potatoes.
The vineyards begin a stone’s throw from the family farm. Alain has learned about it since childhood. From his mother whom he had to follow from small age, and from his grandfather and uncle. Thus he learned it all the old fashioned way, where one generation transmits its know-how to the next as it has been done in the countryside for centuries. Alain listened to it all.
Today however, he combines it with his own thinking. A logic, that combines his higher engineering education from ESAP: Ecole Superieure d’Agriculture de Purpan in Toulouse and the experience obtained through the work with farmers all over Europe for so many years.
- In 1997 he took over the first of a number of family vineyards to become a weekend winegrower in Champagne.In 1997 he took over the first of a number of family vineyards to become a weekend winegrower in Champagne.
- With the next plot in 2006 the total acreage was more than one hectare, and the idea to become a fulltime winegrower moved closer.
- In 2009 the old dream finally became reality. Champagne Tange-Gerard began working full time.
- Five years later, in 2013, the company grows three hectares of Chardonnay and Pinot vines and currently sell some thousand bottles of Champagne each year. With more to come.
