db interview: Stephen Leroux of Charles Heidsieck
db talks Champagne Charlie and how the house was recently rescued from oblivion with Charles Heidsieck’s executive director.
While London sizzles in the summer heat, the air inside the Institute of Directors on Pall Mall is rarified. It’s late afternoon and the dining room is dotted with late lunchers and number crunchers. The two men at the table opposite eye up the three bottles of Champagne in front of me enviously.
I’m here to meet Stephen Leroux, executive director of Charles Heidsieck. Dressed in a black suit and no tie, with his sandy blond hair and boyish demeanour, he looks more British than French. His accent isn’t especially French either, and before we get going with the interview he reveals he’s half Scottish, hence the impeccable English.
Fizzing with ideas, Leroux talks nineteen to the dozen while I struggle to scribble it all down. He’s refreshingly candid for a Champenois about the state Charles Heidsieck was in when he arrived at the house in 2013. “By that point sales had dropped by 90% and the company was in a state of despair. The brand had gone to sleep. Turning it around is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” he says.
Heidsieck had plummeted from great heights – as recently as 1986 its sales were on a par with Veuve Clicquot. Leroux puts Heidsieck’s demise down to being owned by Rémy Cointreau, which ploughed more cash into promoting its spirits brands as they were more profitable for the business. “A Champagne brand seems like a jewel in the crown but it’s a long way to Tipperary. With all the machinery and the ageing process it’s an expensive business and by 2011 Charles Heidsieck had nearly died.”
The fizz’s fortunes began to turn around in 2011 when the house was bought by French luxury goods firm EPI, run by Christopher Descours, for £345 million. “It was in a bad way but the brand has crocodile-thick skin and today, given the size that we are, sales are flying, but we’re still nowhere near where we were in the ‘80s,” he says.
According to Leroux, the secret to the brand’s recent success is independent distribution predominantly with family companies. I’m curious to know what appealed to him about the idea of jumping aboard a sinking ship. “I’m not a masochist – I was attracted to the quality of the Champagnes – it was the opportunity of a lifetime as I was able to have a big impact and revamp the brand from scratch,” he enthuses.
Leroux has good pedigree, having worked at Bollinger for five years as marketing director, moving to Louis Roederer where he was export manager for a year prior to joining Heidsieck in 2013. Though even his impressive track record couldn’t fully prepare him for the task at hand. “I had a few frights at the beginning when I realised just how bad things were. Our distribution was dying and customers had forgotten about us, it was really quite frightening, ” Leroux admits.
Damage control began when he quickly set about repositioning the brand as an “authentic luxury product”, which came with a higher price tag to match. “When I joined the company sommeliers had forgotten about the brand.
“Most of the young sommeliers had no idea about who we were and what we were all about,” says Leroux, who made it his mission to spread the word about Charles Heidsieck and get the fizz on pour by the glass at affluent London venues like Oblix in The Shard, China Tang at The Dorchester and Michelin-starred restaurant Dabbous in Fitzrovia. New account wins include The Hurlingham Club in west London, Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen in Old Street and the English National Opera.
Compared to the likes of Veuve and Moët, production is tiny – under one million bottles across the brand. Leroux helped secure distribution deals in the US with Michael Mondavi’s Folio Fine Wine Partners, and with Liberty Wines in the UK, where it is mainly sold in the on-trade. According to Leroux, sales are up 300% since 2011. When telling the story of founder Charles Heidsieck, Leroux lights up.
“He was this crazy entrepreneur that was imprisoned in Louisiana during the American Civil War while attempting to smuggle cotton out of the port in Mobile, Alabama. He was arrested under the suspicion of being a spy for the French government sparking what became known as ‘the Heidsieck incident’, and was eventually freed by Abraham Lincoln.”
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Despite his brush with the law, Heidsieck is credited for popularising Champagne in the US, where his brand was a runaway success. He became known as ‘Champagne Charlie’ and was a regular at New York high society banquets and balls, becoming one of the first wine trade celebrities.
While sales are still strong in America, France is the number one market for Charles Heidsieck, followed by the UK. Leroux is keen to play on Heidsieck’s fame in America to boost sales. “American ladies love the Champagne Charlie story, particularly after Hugh Grant played him in a 1989 biopic,” he says. There has long been talk of a revival of the popular Champagne Charlie expression, which was discontinued in 1995.
Leroux is tight-lipped about when the long-awaited re-release will happen but confirms that Champagne Charlie will definitely be back. The fizz reflected Heidsieck’s maverick spirit – it was a vintage Champagne with no rules whose blend changed from year to year.
“Champagne Charlie will be back it’s just a question of when. Getting our act together is holding us up at the moment,” Leroux admits, revealing that it won’t be on the market for at least another five years, possibly ten.
In the meantime, Leroux plans to release a new brand within the portfolio next year from library wines currently resting in the Heidsieck cellars – Heidsieck was ahead of Dom Pérignon in developing the concept of oenothèque wines in the late ‘90s. “We still have some fantastic older vintages of Champagne Charlie in the cellar that we’d like to re-release under a new name,” Leroux says, though won’t reveal what it is.
One of Charles Heidsieck’s unique selling points it its high use of reserve wines in its flagship cuvée, Brut Reserve, which is formed of around 40% reserve wine from up to 200 base wines with an average age of 10 years.
It spends five years on its lees before release – considerably longer than most non-vintage Champagnes, giving it its signature richness and notes of brioche, buttered toast and hazelnuts. Given the wines that go into the blend and the time it’s aged for, its £42 price tag offers great value for money for the quality of the liquid.
The brand takes the quality of its Brut Reserve so seriously that it opted not to release a 2002 vintage despite its remarkable quality, and instead chose to use the best grapes from that year to top up its reserve wine library. “We want to be judged on the Brut Reserve and always put quality first,” says Leroux. Unsurprisingly then, Charles Heidsieck’s vintage and rosé releases account for just 4% of its total production.
As for what lies ahead, Leroux is keen to revive the brand’s boating links with sponsorship of sailing events. He also wants to release more vintage expressions, half bottles and magnums to supply demand. He’s currently looking at ways to rebrand the house’s blanc de blancs prestige cuvée, Blancs de Millenaires, the 1995 vintage of which is still on sale for around £130 a bottle.
“We haven’t been very good at selling it as it’s been on the market for eight years,” Leroux admits, hinting that a new Blancs de Millenaires release will hit the shelves next year. It won’t be the 1996 vintage however, as cellar master Cyril Brun hasn’t deemed it ready yet. “It isn’t where he wants it to be yet – we might never release it,” Leroux reveals. In an age of multiple vintage releases from house hell-bent on making as much money as possible, there’s something very refreshing, quaint event, about Heidsieck’s unwavering commitment to quality. Long may it continue.
