We love Champagne

A virtuous Champagne?

There’s a new Champagne brand in town, Vertuze. Created by the maison Cuillier Père et Fils Champagne House, in Saint Thierry (the Champagne-Ardennes region of France) but marketed via the US and Russia.

The LA based BevMarketing Group specialises in spirits marketing such as vodka; they came up with this concept of launching a Champagne brand that would be positioned to a very high end straight away (a bottle is sold at $300)

Russian agency DDC Creative Lab designed the Vertuze packaging, a less surprising choice than one would expect as the BevMarketing Group CEO studied in Russia and worked for a while within the vodka field/industry. According to DDC Creative Lab, the bottle’s style was inspired by the Napoleonian era.

As to the Champagne tasting features, all we know is that it is a Vintage one and that it will be sold in the States and in Europe.  We guess it should be in the same line as the Cuillier Père et Fils Champagnes while offering offering a higher end alternative (the Champagne House doesn’t currently sells vintage Champagnes).

Something seems too good to be true: the Vertuze label reads 1979 Vintage, which would imply that this bottle is a bargain! We may wonder if this is yet another marketing-based product or it has the legitimacy to join the respected Champagne brands.

If it’s the first option, its main goal is to be pricey, to showcase sophisticated package and communication with a quite traditional taste and quality (under $200 worth to make some great profit).

That would be a first, completely playing on the “Champagne” ambiguity, one day luxury item, the next available to the masses. If we take the French example, no other luxury product can boast to be bought by one out of two customers.

From Vine to Vintage at Nicolas Feuillatte

This video (courtesy of Luxury Channel) takes us to the Champagne region of France within the Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne House. In total, their vine territories spread across 2000 ha or 300 different villages. The Champagne region is made of 5 counties: Marne, Aube, Aisne, Haute-Marne and Seine-et-Marne.

Cellar Master Jean Pierre Vincent is the man in charge for the grapes overall. His role is to be at every step of the wine making process but also to go around the world to taste wines. He gives his two basic rules to create great Champagne:
-mix grapes from various villages of the region
-mix the 3 grape types (Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay) as they all bring different nuances to the wine

I.e. Chardonnay is all about lightness, citrusy and elegance whereas Pinot Noir adds some structure, depth and intensity. The Pinot Meunier binds those together with roundness and ensures a balanced style.

Consistency of taste has been ensured overtime for Nicolas Feuillatte as there has only been one Cellar Master; Jean Pierre Vincent is truly the guardian of the brand taste. He judges this year’s harvest based on 4 criterions: degree, acidity, maturity, grape aspect.

The video then follows each stage of the Champagne production where we learn how the precious bubbles are added:  during the 2ndary fermentation, sugar and yeast are incorporated in the still wine. The yeast will consume sugar and create bubbles of carbon dioxide plus alcohol. That carbon dioxide, being made in the bottle, is what creates the bubbles. Nicolas Feuillatte adopted temperature controlled environments, which enables to control every stage of the production.

500 million bottles have been produced since the Nicolas Feuillatte House was started.