Camille was not afraid to exercise her charismatic charms, throwing extravagant parties to which the fashionable set clamoured to be invited. These boosted the reputation of the house and its champagne. (There is quite a tradition of strong women leaders in Champagne. Madame Clicquot took over her family’s business in 1805, when she was only 27. In the mid-19th century, Louise Pommery grew her late husband’s relatively small winery into a leading champagne house. Mathilde Emile Laurent-Perrier ran the show for 38 years from 1900. And Lily Bollinger was a contemporary of Camille’s, managing the house through the Second World War and receiving the Ordre du Mérite from the French government in 1976.)
Camille’s grandson, Jean-Claude Rouzaud, headed Louis Roederer until 2006. A modernizer, he made a foray into enemy territory by opening the Anderson Valley winery in California in 1987. The following year, he oversaw the launch of an American sparkling wine called Roederer Estate (marketed under the name Quartet in Europe). He has since handed over the reins to his son Frédéric.
Frédéric Rouzaud’s name is occasionally evoked in marketing circles alongside that of Cristal, the Louis Roederer cuvée favoured – until recently – by American rap stars. Cristal was originally created for the Tsars of Russia on the orders of Alexander II in 1876. Sweeter than conventional champagnes, it came in a flat-bottomed, transparent lead-crystal bottle (necessary, legend has it, because Alexander feared that conventional green bottles might disguise the presence of poison or booby traps). While the Russian revolution put an end to Cristal’s extremely niche market, Camille Olry-Roederer resurrected the brand in 1945 as a cuvée prestige that would play a role similar to that of Dom Pérignon at Moët & Chandon. It later became known for its gold-tinted cellophane sleeve, designed to protect the wine from damage by light.
It’s not entirely clear why rappers adopted Cristal as opposed to any other champagne brand. Some have suggested that the evocative name slips easily into a lyric. Others say the gold label and distinctive packaging were the attraction. According to one article, ‘Rapper Biggie Smalls (aka the Notorious BIG)... is believed to have been the first performer to mention Cristal. He started off elegizing Moët & Chandon champagne, then switched to ‘Cristal forever’ on the song ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’ on Jay-Z’s album Reasonable Doubt. References to Cristal started popping up in the lyrics of Lil’ Kim, Snoop Dogg, P Diddy, Jay-Z and 50 Cent’ (‘Bring on the bling – rappers give Cristal and Hennessy street cred’, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 December 2004).
The trend should have been viewed as solid gold at Louis Roederer, exposing Cristal to a young, entirely new audience for zero marketing dollars. But back in Old Europe, not everyone was certain that the brand benefited from being associated with the ostentatious universe of rap. The grapes hit the fan when Frédéric Rouzaud, freshly appointed as Roederer’s managing director, responded to a question posed by a journalist from Intelligent Life, a lifestyle magazine published by The Economist. ‘Frédéric Rouzaud... says that Roederer has observed its association with rap with “curiosity and serenity”. But he does not seem entirely serene. Asked if an association between Cristal and the bling lifestyle could actually hurt the brand, he replies: “That’s a good question, but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business”’ (‘Bubbles and bling’, Intelligent Life, summer 2006).
The fact that the comment appeared under the sub-headline ‘Unwanted attention’ compounded the diplomatic error. The news quickly flowed to the rap community, which pledged to boycott Cristal. Today, Martine Lorson admits that the incident was unfortunate. ‘In my view it was a misinterpretation: we mustn’t forget that Monsieur Rouzaud was not speaking in his native language. But it’s true that, while it was by no means our intention to upset anyone, rappers were not our traditional clients. During the short period of controversy that followed, we received many supportive calls and letters. To a certain extent, this slip of the tongue merely returned Cristal to its usual positioning.’
She adds that Roederer did not sell ‘a single additional bottle’ of Cristal thanks to the rap phenomenon: the wine is produced in such limited quantities that upping production to satisfy increased demand was not an option. When the rappers and their fans abandoned the brand, other buyers quickly filled the vacuum.
Like many luxury brands, Louis Roederer does not consider that it engages in anything as tawdry as ‘marketing’. However, it deploys certain communication techniques that seem to fall into that category. They are the responsibility of executive vice-president Michael Janneau.
‘It’s true that we consider marketing something of a dirty word,’ he says, with unexpected good humour. ‘No doubt you think there’s an element of snobbery in that. But in fact it’s a very logical stance for us to take. If you consider that the aim of marketing in the classic sense is to sell more of your product and thus gain a greater market share, then that is not the business we’re in. In fact, we do quite the opposite. We produce a limited number of bottles and we decide to whom we will allocate them. We’re practising a policy of inaccessibility, which is the essence of luxury. In fact the real challenge for us – and here is where an element of marketing comes in – is to control with the precision of a jeweller exactly where and in what circumstances our brand appears.’
When Janneau arrived at the house in 1998 he found it to be ‘almost advertising-phobic’. Nonetheless, it had achieved a couple of publicity coups, notably in 1992 when it sponsored a search for the missing plane of French writer and airman Antoine de Saint Exupéry. Known as ‘Saint Ex’, the revered author of Wind, Sand and Stars and The Little Prince disappeared in his P-38 Lightning off the coast of Corsica in 1944. (The search backed by Roederer was unsuccessful, but the plane’s wreckage was discovered in waters not far from Nice a few years later.) The champagne house had also sponsored the restoration of a statue of the Empress Sabine – the wife of Hadrian – at the Louvre.
Sponsorship remains key to Roederer’s strategy. ‘Creating print advertisements and buying space in magazines does not make much sense for a brand like Roederer,’ Janneau observes. ‘You find yourself drowned out by six or seven pages of advertising for brands owned by LVMH.’
Janneau stumbled across a much better opportunity in 2003. Through mutual friends he was introduced to Thierry Grillet, cultural director of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (the French national library). This vast archive of almost anything that’s ever been published in France – or at least since 1368, when it was established as the royal library of Charles V – is also a museum with two sites in Paris. Grillet told Janneau that the library possessed more than five million photographs, which were at that moment lying dormant in a cellar under the library’s building in rue de Richelieu, just up the street from the Louvre. ‘And they didn’t have a cent to spend on exhibiting them,’ Janneau says. ‘After that, we very quickly decided to become the sponsor of the Bibliothèque Nationale’s photography collection. Our first move was to fund the installation of a gallery in the very heart of the building on rue de Richelieu.’
Thanks to that piece of smart thinking, the Louis Roederer brand has been attached to a series of widely reviewed photography exhibitions and names such as Eugene Atget, Sophie Calle, Robert Capa, Stéphane Couturier, Mario Giacomelli and Sebastião Salgado. ‘Personally, I get a great deal of satisfaction from the relationship. I believe it’s important for a luxury brand to contribute to society. One can face oneself more easily in the mirror.’
At the same time, Roederer redesigned its website to emphasize its involvement in culture and the arts (www.louis-roederer.com). Each new exhibition is accompanied by an interactive preview online. The brand has not entirely rejected traditional advertising – ‘We do a modest amount,’ says Janneau – but there is little doubt that it has reaped greater benefit from a far more innovative approach: placing itself at the intersection of art and the web.
Before leaving the bra
nd’s headquarters, I am taken on a brief tour of its cellars. They naturally seem smaller and more claustrophobic than those of Moët & Chandon. Here, it’s a little easier to believe that the remueurs turn each bottle by hand. They also return periodically to set the bottles at a new angle in the racks. As I mentioned earlier, during the fermentation period the necks of the bottles are gradually inclined towards the floor, so that the debris of dead yeast gathers below the cork. In the corking and labelling area above, I learn why.
The question has been bugging me since my first cellar tour: how is the sediment removed from the bottle without losing any of the champagne? Now I get my answer. The neck of the bottle is flash-frozen. The cork is removed and the pressure forces out the neck-sized lump of ice, with the sediment neatly encased inside. This process is known as ‘disgorgement’. The small amount of champagne lost in the process is replaced with a dose of the same type of wine, mixed with a dash of cane sugar. Alternatively, some winemakers prefer to add a liqueur made from a personal selection of reserve wines, to give the resulting champagne a more complex aroma.
Once re-corked, a bottle of Louis Roederer is returned to the cellar for a ‘rest’ period. It will spend six more months in the dark before it finally gets a chance to gleam on the table of a fancy restaurant.
CHAMPAGNE BUBBLES OVER
A great contradiction lies at the heart of Champagne country. Although many of the houses rely on the scarcity of their product for their allure, they are also in business. If demand can’t be satisfied, or prices rise from high to astronomical, customers will go elsewhere – to the sparkling wines of the United States, for example. And the simple fact of the matter is that there is not enough champagne to go around. The entire territory of the Champagne AOC region as determined by the 1927 legislation is planted with vines. Production is at a maximum. But new customers from China, Russia and India have developed a taste for champagne.
Faced with this dilemma, the growers and the champagne houses have come to a radical decision – to revise the official borders of the Champagne region. A request from the growers’ union (the Syndicat Général des Vignerons) to the INAO (the Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité, part of the Ministry of Agriculture) was granted in 2008. The first new plots are likely to be authorized by 2015.
This, as you can imagine, is a delicate process. The existing region covers some 33,000 hectares and 319 villages (or ‘communes’). The revision could mean that 40 new villages are added.
For the villages concerned, there is a great deal at stake. Daniel Lorson of the CIVC estimates that one hectare of land planted with vines within the official Champagne region is worth €1 million. A hectare of normal farmland is worth between €5,000 and €7,000. ‘Imagine you’re a farmer with a plot of land worth €5,000,’ he says. ‘Then, overnight, you find that your land falls within the Champagne appellation. Jackpot!’
But Lorson emphasizes that ‘not just any land’ will be chosen: ‘The process is of course being conducted scientifically. A committee of independent experts has been drawn from different fields: geography, geology, agricultural engineering and history. There is even a plant sociologist, which was a term I’d never come across before. They study the relationships between different types of plants and how they interact with their environment. This committee is analysing the entire region, almost under a microscope, to determine which land should be selected. At the end of the first phase, they’ve already determined 40 likely villages.’
The initial report attracted more than 2,000 comments and protests from landowners and communes when it was made public. The second six-year phase, which began in 2009, involves choosing the precise parcels of land that should be planted with vines. ‘You can imagine the work that represents, especially when you consider all the subtle factors that go into the making of a great wine: the soil, the subsoil, exposure to the sun, the micro-climate... And finally, there is the historic aspect. We want to choose land that forms part of the heritage of the Champagne region. The committee wants to retain a certain consistency and homogeneity during this process.’
The aim is to boost champagne production just enough to satisfy rising demand, but not so much that the market is destabilized and the golden nectar is transformed into a commodity. And making adjustments to the existing territory, as well as expanding it, should safeguard the quality of champagne. Not that there aren’t voices of protest. Some growers aren’t keen on seeing their slice of the pie reduced. And certain champagne houses would have been happy to sit back and watch prices rise until their wine became accessible only to the very rich. Finally, though, the region decided that it wanted to hold on to its 12-to-15 per cent share of the global effervescent wine market.
In the meantime, ironically, the depressed economy has meant slowing sales. Lorson is confident, though, that champagne will survive with its mystique intact. ‘This region has known hard times before. In any case, what’s the best remedy when you’re feeling down? The first hint of celebration – a birthday, a wedding, an anniversary – and you’ll hear the popping of champagne corks again.’
15
The wines of paradise
* * *
‘It’s like comparing a flint to a pebble.’
For some people, wine is not merely a civilized pleasure – it is a passion, even an obsession. Take the man sitting before me in the bar of the Crillon Hotel. With an open suntanned face and a light sprinkling of silver hair, François Audouze looks like a fairly unassuming person – a successful businessman, perhaps. He is even drinking a glass of mineral water. Nothing about him would lead one to suspect that, in a secret location somewhere near Paris, he has a cellar stocked with thousands of the world’s most rare and valuable wines. And his mission in life is to drink some of them, preferably in good company. Several times a year, Audouze invites friends, connoisseurs, fellow collectors and the merely curious to a lavish dinner. For the occasion, he selects 10 or so bottles from his cellar.
‘I was in the steel business, which on the face of it has nothing to do with gastronomy,’ he says. ‘But as a businessman, you are fortunate enough to visit great restaurants and drink very good wines. At a relatively young age, in my early 30s, I developed a taste for old wines. The wine that changed my life was a 1923 Château Climens, a Sauternes. When I sipped it, I lost all my bearings. It was like no other wine I had ever tasted. I knew that the essence of winemaking – its soul, if you like – was here. I was determined to further explore this magical world. And because I had the means, I built up a considerable cellar.’
To be precise, Audouze owns more than 40,000 bottles of wine, of which 10,000 are over 50 years old. I am astonished by this figure. I buy CDs fairly regularly, I tell him, but I still don’t have 35,000 of them. ‘When you’re passionate, when you’re driven to explore, you just keep buying,’ he says. ‘I buy a bottle of wine practically every day. I picked one up just before I came to meet you.’
At a certain point he realized that he had collected far more bottles than he would ever be able to drink in his lifetime. So why not share the pleasure? ‘I decided to organize dinners at which I could drink these wines with others. More than that, my aim was to provide the ultimate in gastronomy: the perfect food with the perfect wines. I consider a dinner to be like a symphony, with an overture, a drama and a finale. The wine plays a crucial role.’
Audouze works with leading chefs to ensure that the flavours are perfectly choreographed. Each dinner takes place at a restaurant that has been awarded a minimum of two Michelin stars. Audouze invites nine guests who contribute just under €1,000 each to attend. It’s possible to apply for a place at his website: www.wine-dinners.com. At the time of writing he has staged more than 120 dinners, each one different. ‘It’s important to stress that these dinners are open to anyone, whether you have an enormous experience in wine tasting or not. Obviously, it’s a bit like music – the more you listen, the more you become attuned to the subtle role played by each
instrument – but during the dinner I explain exactly why each wine has been chosen, so you need not be an expert to understand.’
The bottles opened at the dinner are an average of 50 years old. Some are considerably younger, others are far more ancient: one was an 1828 Muscat des Canaries. (‘Just imagine,’ he says. ‘Truly a wine from another world!’)
Audouze does not turn his nose up at younger wines – far from it – but he insists that they can never have the complexity of a wine from a bygone age. ‘It’s like comparing an 18th-century Aubusson tapestry to a modern hand-woven rug. The modern rug might be pretty, even exceptional, but it can’t compare to a tapestry from the 18th century. It does not have that plenitude, that fullness, or the colours that are impossible to recreate today. That’s the case with old wines: the palette of aromas and flavours is infinitely more complex. It’s like comparing a flint to a pebble.’
He has, he will tell you, supped the wines of paradise: a 1929 Romanée-Conti, a 1945 Mouton Rothschild, a 1947 Cheval Blanc, a 1900 Margaux, even an 1861 Yquem. While rare wines are collected and traded like any other valuable commodity, Audouze buys all his bottles with the aim of one day opening them. ‘That does not mean a bottle or a label cannot be beautiful. And, indeed, I keep my empty bottles as souvenirs. But I’m not ashamed to admit that what interests me most is their contents.’
Some of the wines in Audouze’s cellar are worth tens of thousands of dollars, which is why he never reveals its location. To give you an idea, a single bottle of great wine like the ’45 Romanée-Conti might fetch more than US $30,000 at auction. Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux that had supposedly once been owned by Thomas Jefferson was sold at Christie’s for US $156,000 in 1985. It has since become the subject of a book called The Billionaire’s Vinegar (2008), a title that reveals something of the plot. Audouze was neither the buyer nor the seller of that particular bottle, but it inspires me to ask him how he can be certain that he’s getting the genuine article. How prevalent is wine fakery?
Luxury World: The Past, Present and Future of Luxury Brands Page 20