Personal advice
The Alfavin Story
It started in 1977 with one sip — a Trotanoy 1975. From that moment on, Matthias was hooked, incurable, and lost to wine forever.
Back then, the world was very different. Truly great wines interested hardly anyone. People didn’t buy a Pétrus or a Romanée-Conti with money alone, but with curiosity and passion. Matthias brought both — and bought a lot of wine. By 1982, this had grown into a wine business.
In the decades that followed, he spent more time in winemakers’ cellars than anywhere else. He worked closely with people who didn’t just produce wine — they lived and breathed it: Lalou Bize-Leroy, Jacques Rousseau, Anne-Claude Leflaive, Hubert Lignier, De Vogüé, Sauzet, and Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier. He always preferred buying to selling — and so his already impressive cellar continued to grow.
Then things changed.
The wines we loved turned into speculative assets. Prices rose to a point where bottles were traded rather than opened. That wasn’t our wine anymore. That wasn’t our world.
We have no joy in working with wines that have become too expensive to be enjoyed.
What drives us today isn’t a clever strategy or a business plan. It’s pure passion — and the deep conviction that truly great wine should connect people, not divide them.
We’re wine-mad, and we make no secret of it. We spend far more on wine than reason would permit. And we have a feeling you know exactly what we’re talking about.
Through our webshop, real friendships have already been born. That probably says everything.
Over time, the prices for these wines skyrocketed. For us, there’s no joy in dealing with speculation objects—bottles so expensive they’re no longer even opened. We could hardly taste them ourselves anymore. These days, we’re less about running a business and more about following our passion—one that connects us with everyday people. Well, almost everyday… because we’re a little wine-crazy and spend far more on wine than common sense would allow.
Of course, you can’t do without a webshop nowadays, but even through it, friendships have already been formed. We’re looking forward to meeting you! It would be easy to just say, 'we’re always here for you,' but instead I’d rather say that we give it our all. Then again—can you really call it 'effort' when you’re living your dream job?
Champagne is our passion. It accompanies us through so many different moments in life.
A glass at the end of a long, tiring day, curled up with a good book.
A bright, crystalline Blanc de Blancs on an evening in our mountain hut, gazing out at the glacier.
Or cooking with friends and sharing Champagnes that can carry an entire menu from start to finish.
Champagne also belongs to our most festive occasions.
What fascinates me most is tracing the long, beautiful development of Champagne into ever more complex and layered aromas — like this one at Christmas a few years ago. The bottle on the right is from the 1970s, while the one on the left is a cuvée made from vintages at the end of the 1990s.