Wine is not just a product to be enjoyed, making wine is also an industry, a vast business and industry. Worldwide, 247 million hectolitres are produced by millions of producers. Every bottle you see is bottled somewhere and before that process, the grapes are fermented. There are countless wine producers around the world and, in addition, a few giants operate. These giants, of course, also started small. How that works? To find out, we visited one of France's biggest wine producers: Les Grands Chais de France.
How it began
To Alsace? Yes: GCF's heart beats in northern France. Founder and owner Joseph Helfrich (1956) was born and raised in Alsace. His father René owned a small distillery and Joseph wanted to continue on that path. At the age of 23, he started for himself. He started raising and bottling cognac, and started with a new product: cognac with cream. He bought a shed in Petersbach and got to work. This working with cognac is an unusual situation in itself, because cognac is an appellation with extensive regulations, which state that the spirit-rich liquid is not allowed to age outside the appellation. However, these provisions have not been in place for very long, and in Joseph's early days, he was free to work with cognac. He still has this permission. Helfrich created the now famous Comte Joseph brand. As Alsace is close to Germany and Helfrich was raised bilingual, the neighbouring country became an important outlet. And so exports began. By the way: to this day, cognac is still raised in Petersbach.
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