The holiday season is full of convenient excuses to gather around good food and fine wines – rest assured that the Oenodia team took the opportunity to enjoy a leisurely evening in a nice restaurant in Aix-en-Provence at the end of December 2018.

A festive meal to welcome new team members

Almost everyone in Oenodia’s team was attending, except for a part of the technical crew held back on a Champagne-related project. Of course, we spared a thought for these hard-working colleagues during our fun-filled dinner. The restaurant crew had plotted a blind-tasting around the Chardonnay varietal. The workshop was entertaining and succeeded in both getting the conversation flowing and revealing each and everyone’s palate sensitivities. With our taste buds thus warmed-up and our stomachs growling, we were ready to enjoy a cuisine both sophisticated and genuine – a real Christmas foretaste.

The evening was the occasion to welcome new team members: Remi Sagi in the engineering crew, Isabelle Martinuzzi as a process engineer and Isaure Blouët in the sales department. These latest additions to the staff come as much-needed back-up to support a steady growth (+30% in 5 years) in the activity, much of it (80%) overseas.

2018 in the rearview mirror and 2019 ahead

The dinner was also the occasion to review and assess the past year and its biggest achievements, among which the setting up of 3 Starsline units:

  • in the UK, a 90m² XF paired with a STARS30;
  • in Russia, a 45m² XF and a STARS15;
  • in the USA, two 240m² XF paired with a STARS180.

Those three new customers will be able achieve filtration and tartaric stabilization in a single pass. Preparing for bottling will be much easier for them: the wine, just in time.

Our director, Yannick Le Gratiet, took advantage of us all being together to profile the year ahead: it looks like 2019 will be as busy and bustling as 2018 for Oenodia. So, dear reader, we raise our glasses to the New Year and wish you all the best.