Jacques Selosse

Anselme Selosse took over his family's Avize estate in 1980 and pushed it somewhere Champagne hadn't really gone before: treating the vineyard, not just the cellar, as where the real work happens.

He farmed biodynamically through the late '90s and early 2000s, and while the estate no longer carries a strict certification, the underlying obsession with vine health over rulebook compliance never left.

Selosse is widely considered the single most influential winemaker in modern Champagne — not because he founded a school, but because an entire generation of growers making terroir-first, low-intervention Champagne today are, whether they credit him or not, working in the space he opened up.