Robert-Jean de Vogüé, Renaud Poirier and a site in the Andean foothills.

Chandon began in Argentina. The company says that Robert-Jean de Vogüé, then president of Moët & Chandon, sent the oenologist Renaud Poirier to look for places in South America where the grapes of Champagne could be grown for sparkling wine, and that the two settled on Agrelo, in Luján de Cuyo in the province of Mendoza. LVMH gives 1959 as the creation date of Chandon Argentina, and the company describes it as Moët & Chandon’s first winery outside France.

The company’s own account of those first years is plain about the conditions: the nearest telephone was miles away and the first staff lived in unheated barracks. Poirier became the first chief winemaker, followed by Philippe Coulon, and the estate later added vineyards at Tupungato and El Espinillo. LVMH says the Mendoza vineyards sit at roughly 1,000 to 1,700 metres above sea level, and that the estate has used drip irrigation since 1990.

The United States came next. Chandon says de Vogüé tasted California wines at a conference in 1968 and wanted a Champagne house to be the first to make sparkling wine there. Domaine Chandon was established in 1973 in Yountville, in the Napa Valley, and English Wikipedia, citing the San Francisco Chronicle, calls it the first French-owned sparkling wine producer in the valley. The businessman John Wright led it for more than twenty years, Wine Spectator reported in 2012, and the company gives 1976 as its first harvest. Its vineyards lie in the Los Carneros, Mount Veeder and Yountville areas.

Five estates, a restaurant and a star with seven points.

The network kept growing. Chandon says its Brazilian estate was founded in 1973 at Garibaldi, in the Serra Gaúcha of Rio Grande do Sul, by Frédéric Chandon de Briailles and Philippe Coulon, and that the first cuvée, now sold as Chandon Réserve Brut, was released in 1977. In Australia, the company says John Wright first visited in 1982, the oenologist Tony Jordan was hired in 1985 and found the Green Point site at Coldstream in the Yarra Valley, the estate was founded in 1986 and the first wines came out in 1989. Jordan also chose the Chinese site, in the eastern foothills of the Helan Mountains in Ningxia; the company says a trial vintage was made there in 2012 and the winery opened in 2013.

Napa gave the brand a restaurant as well as a winery. English Wikipedia says the restaurant at Domaine Chandon opened with the winery, with Udo Nechutnys as its first chef and Philippe Jeanty after him; it was renamed Étoile in 2006 and closed in December 2014 so the tasting room could grow, the Napa Valley Register reported.

The look of the bottles changed in April 2021. A Chandon release from Napa, published by Wine Industry Advisor on 5 April 2021, called it the brand’s first new design in sixty years. Its centre is a seven-point star: six points for the six wineries then in the network, in Argentina, Brazil, California, Australia, China and India, and a seventh for what the company calls its “pioneering spirit.” An embossed vertical strip running down the front of the bottle replaced the earlier arch-and-star label, and the new design appeared first on Brut Classic and the rosé. Boss Hunting reported in May 2021 that the redesign was done in-house and that the wine itself was unchanged. A label-industry listing from July 2021 notes prismatic embossing on the neck and front label.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all wine names: Chateau Ste. Michelle, Bogle, 14 Hands, Dark Horse, Cupcake, Ménage à Trois and Chandon. Wine brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a restaurant list.

A wine brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its wine is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its wine is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Moët Hennessy brand, a spritz and a change in India.

Chandon belongs to the drinks side of LVMH. English Wikipedia says Moët Hennessy was formed in 1971 when Moët & Chandon merged with the cognac house Hennessy, and that it joined Louis Vuitton in 1987 to create LVMH; Chandon is listed among Moët Hennessy’s wine and spirits houses, alongside its Champagne parent. The company describes Chandon as the world’s largest sparkling wine domaine, which is its own claim.

The range has moved beyond classic sparkling wine. In May 2021 Chandon announced Garden Spritz in the United States, a ready-to-drink aperitif that blends Argentinian sparkling wine with an orange bitter liqueur made in Mendoza, Wine Industry Advisor reported. LVMH’s page for the Argentine estate lists Garden Spritz alongside the estate’s Extra-Brut, which the company says was named best Argentine sparkling wine at the 2023 Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships.

India is the one estate whose story has turned. LVMH gives 2014 as the creation date of Chandon India, and Moët Hennessy opened the winery at Dindori, in the Nashik region of Maharashtra, in April 2016, calling it the sixth Chandon winery. Drinks Intel reported on 26 March 2026 that Sula Vineyards had agreed to buy the Dindori estate, its winery, vineyard and visitor centre, but not the Chandon brand assets, and that Chandon would stop making wine in India once the deal closed, which was expected by the end of March 2027.

One practical note: Chandon and Moët & Chandon share a name and an owner but are different wines. Moët & Chandon is the Champagne house of Épernay; Chandon is the sparkling wine made at its estates outside France.

For a design guide, Chandon shows how a brand spread across several countries can make its map into its mark, with one point of a star for each winery. Compare Moët & Chandon, the Champagne house behind it, and Dom Pérignon, its vintage cuvée. For this guide we use night navy, star gold and rosé blush with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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