Champagne, the world’s most famous sparkling wine, is without a doubt also the most exciting one. As true Champagne only comes from the Champagne region located some 160km north of Paris, French wine laws are extremely strict and explicit about the entire process that ends up as a bubbly bottle, including locations where it may be produced, grapes that can be used, yield and winemaking.
This tight control of viticulture and winemaking by no means implies that all champagne is similar and dull. Quite on the contrary, most of them are, and some have a potential to be, excellent and one of the kind. Terroir is the concept behind it…
- TerrWHAT???
- Well, in short, it’s a French word coined to denote the sum of geographic position, soil and climate unique to each region, and therefore to each vineyard.
It all sounds great but the truth is that all this specific data and names are often unknown or simply forgotten when we find ourselves in a wine shop or a supermarket facing a gallery with hundreds of bottles of different shapes, sizes and colours with labels in unknown languages.
Champagne alone with approximately 34 thousand hectares of vines accounts for nearly 340 million bottles - or 15% or global production - that are sent out to compete not only with the sparkling wine from other regions of France and the rest of the world but also with one another. That’s a huge challenge for both the seller and the buyer.
Marketing to the rescue!
Principal players, among them such champagne houses as Louis Roederer, Moët & Chandon or Perrier-Jouët lean over backwards to direct our attention towards their product.
Design is one of the tools of choice and it’s used more boldly by a day. I’ve recently come across some fantastic bottle designs for yet another champagne house, Piper-Heidsieck, which are great eye-catchers.
Jean Paul Gaultier’s design for Piper-Heidsieck’s Cuvée Brut champagne unveiled at this year’s Festival de Cannes. Inspiration: can-can. Material: latex and fishnets.
Piper-Heidsieck’s 'Bodyguard' Brut champagne bottle
sleeved in a seductive lipstick-red faux crocodile skin.
Release date: 9/2011
Sells itself, doesn't it?
Pictures by Piper-Heidsieck
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