Champagne Michel Gawron’s website
Michel Gawron is an independent winemaker who produces his own organic Champagnes. Creating a new website for him was an incredibly exciting experience for me because Michel took the time to explain his work in detail.
What makes Gawron Champagne special?
Michel Gawron’s Champagne is not like other Champagnes. In the region, independent winemakers are quite rare. Often, winemakers simply grow their grapes and either work with cooperatives for production or sell their harvests to large Champagne houses like Veuve Clicquot, Mumm, Moët, and others.
In contrast, independent winemakers have full control over their production, from tending the vines to bottling the final product. This is the case with Michel, who cultivates various grape varieties on his few hectares of land. He has all the necessary equipment for the complex processes of fermentation, vinification, and blending to transform the harvested grapes into Champagne. As a result, Gawron Champagne has a distinct character, with a unique taste that varies depending on the year and weather conditions.
As if that weren’t enough, Michel Gawron’s Champagne is also organic, which is quite uncommon. The vines are not treated with potentially harmful chemicals that could impact the environment and human health. Additionally, the yeasts and sugars used are derived from organic farming.
In the end, Michel Gawron’s Champagnes are truly exceptional, offering an authentic and exquisite taste. There are also several different cuvées available to suit a variety of palates.
Redesigning the website
During my first year of my master’s program, I needed to create a website. Noticing that Michel Gawron’s website didn’t reflect the quality of his work, I reached out to offer my services. At the time, the site still played music when you landed on it, like websites from the early 2000s! The design was just as outdated, and the interface wasn’t responsive at all. Take a look for yourself:
My team and I set out to create a WordPress site to replace the old one. Initially, it wasn’t an easy task, as it was my first time developing a site with this CMS! As a complete beginner, I started the development on my personal OVH server, making changes via FTP. I’ve come a long way since then, now that I’m familiar with Git and local development environments like WAMP!
I installed the OceanWP theme because it allowed me to do a lot without coding, which was a big plus given my skill level at the time. I created a child theme where I did a lot of CSS and only modified the template files to add my JavaScript (I didn’t yet know you could do this via functions.php). For everything else, I relied on plugins.
On the content side, I also rewrote most of the French text. Since I didn’t have much SEO knowledge at that time, I focused solely on the quality of the language to best convey Michel’s expertise.
Conclusion: a happy winemaker
Despite the technical challenges that come with being a beginner, I’m very pleased with the final visual result. Today, I would probably do a lot of things differently. For the first time, I also had to migrate a WordPress site to another server—using the old-school method, no less! I had to rewrite the database URLs with the SRDB tool. It was quite a challenge!
In the end, Michel Gawron was very happy with the final result, and that’s what matters most. His work is now showcased in a way that reflects its true quality. This experience was very educational for me, and maybe one day I’ll revisit the site to optimize it for SEO, which is something I’m much more skilled at now.