WSJ: French Bubbly Garners Hip-Hop Cred

[djrajio]

French Bubbly Garners Hip-Hop Cred

By GREG KELLER

November 8, 2006; Page B2F

CHIGNY LES ROSES, France -- Jean-Jacques Cattier has tried for more than 20 years to sell his champagne in the U.S., but with limited success.

"We've never been able to find an importer who really worked out well," said Mr. Cattier, 62 years old, sitting in the lobby of his winery, located on a steep hillside overlooking Reims, the Champagne region's capital.

But after one of his wines appeared in a music video by rapper Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, Mr. Cattier has received more publicity in two weeks than he has in two decades.

"The attention that we've gotten is such a surprise," Mr. Cattier said. "Japan, Australia, Denmark... The secretary down at the Chigny village hall called me in a panic. She said 'I don't understand, I'm getting so many emails about Armand de Brignac.'"

"Armand de Brignac" is sort-of-an-old name for a new champagne dreamed up by Brett Berish, a drinks importer from New York. In a move timed to capitalize on Jay-Z's boycott this summer of his former drink of choice, Louis Roederer's Cristal, Mr. Berish came to Mr. Cattier and struck a deal to import his champagne under the Armand de Brignac brand name.

The sudden interest in Mr. Cattier's wine speaks to the power of branding and image in the luxury-goods business.

"To launch a champagne in the U.S. you either need three or four centuries of history, or have a big rapper behind you," said Emeric Sauty de Chalon, the head of one of France's leading online wine retailers, 1855.com.

When Jay-Z announced his boycott of Cristal this summer, it caused a stir in the champagne-making world. The rapper took the step after Roederer boss Frederic Rouzaud, commenting on Cristal's popularity among hip-hop artists, remarked that he can't forbid them from buying it.

In his new video, Jay-Z waves away a bottle of Cristal while seated at a Monte Carlo card table, then nods in approval as the server presents a gleaming gold bottle of Armand de Brignac with a raised-pewter logo in the shape of the ace of spades.

How the bottle got into the Jay-Z video for "Show Me What You Got" is a mystery. Speculation raged in some quarters of the media and on hip-hop Web sites about a product-placement deal between Mr. Berish and Jay-Z, in part because Mr. Berish's Sovereign Brands is behind 3 vodka, a premium brand whose marketing has benefited from its association with another rapper.

In a statement issued days after the video began airing in mid-October, Mr. Berish denied it was product placement. "Armand de Brignac and Jay-Z have not entered into any agreement, sponsorship or otherwise."

In an interview, Mr. Berish said Jay-Z heard about the champagne through a mutual friend, asked for a case to be sent to him in Monaco and liked it enough to feature it in his video. "It completely took us by surprise," Mr. Berish said.

According to Mr. Cattier, the importers told him they "had connections in the rap world" who would help launch the champagne in the U.S.

Of the 20.7 million bottles of champagne sold in the U.S. each year, 1.8 million are premium brands, said Brigitte Batonnet of CIVC, the French association of champagne growers. That makes the U.S. the world's top consumer of premium champagnes, which include Cristal and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton's Dom Perignon.

Mr. Cattier's mother registered the "de Brignac" brand name in the late 1940s or early 50s, he said. "She needed to come up with a name, and it was the name of a character in a novel she was reading so she chose that."

But the brand was never developed and the family forgot about it.

When Mr. Berish came looking for champagne brands to develop in the U.S., Mr. Cattier said, he remembered the unused name. CIVC, which regulates champagne names, said the old name could be dusted off and reused only if a first name was added to distinguish it.

"We tried a few names and finally came up with Armand," Mr. Cattier said. "It sounded kind of noble."

He signed over world-wide rights to the name to Sovereign Brands.

Even in a good year Champagne Cattier sells under 20,000 bottles of champagne in the U.S., a fraction of the winemaker's total production of about 1 million bottles.

Mr. Berish originally planned to import 500 cases, or about 6,000 bottles, but that's likely to change now. "There's no way we can meet the demand," he said. "I'll take everything Cattier can supply us with."

Mr. Cattier said he could supply between 100,000 and 200,000 bottles of the wine.

His single-vineyard Clos du Moulin champagne, which was once served on the Concorde, sells for around €50 ($64) bottle in France. Armand de Brignac, which he says doesn't taste radically different, will costs $300 a bottle, a spokesman for Mr. Berish's company, Sovereign Brands, said.

Clos du Moulin "is a good champagne, it's a connoisseur's wine," said 1855.com's Mr. Sauty de Chalon, but not $300-a-bottle good.

By comparison, Cristal retails for around $500, and Dom Perignon for around $100.

"That's a very aggressive strategy, pricing your champagne at three times the price of Dom Perignon," Mr. Sauty de Chalon said.

The winery was founded by Mr. Cattier's grandfather after World War I, but Mr. Cattier says he's traced the family's winemaking roots to an ancestor who started making champagne for his own consumption as far back as 1763. In the winery's entryway is an enlarged photograph of Mr. Cattier seated with French soccer legend Michel Platini, who has ordered 100 bottles of Cattier wine for his son's wedding this month.

As for Mr. Cattier, his musical tastes run more toward the Beatles, and he said he had never heard of Grammy winner Jay-Z before word of the Cristal boycott did the rounds of the village.

"I would have never imagined a few months ago that we'd become part of this mysterious and exclusive rap world," he said. "Jay-Z is a remarkable man. I'd like to invite him here to visit the winery."

Awesome.

[Guest StuckOnStupid]

im mean shit, look what he did for evisu! this can only be great!

wait a minute....

[sygyzy]

Can we get a link to the article?