Message in a bottle: How the Champagne bottle is evolving
Bespoke bottles in Champagne aren’t anything new. After all, before the 1900s, every bottle made in Champagne was essentially ‘bespoke’.
Feature findings
> Before industrial mass-production, all bottles in the region were hand- or mold-blown in batches.
> Given the expense and upheaval involved in producing a bespoke mold there has to be a good reason for producers to embark on an exclusive bottle.
> Marketing is one of the biggest factors in launching bespoke bottles, but advancing technology, the declining trade in sur latte Champagne, increasing competition and growing environmental concerns are also driving change.
> The understanding of the role that oxygen plays in the maturation of Champagne is affecting bottle shape.
> Of the recently launched bespoke bottles discussed in this feature, all favour a narrower neck.
Before industrial mass-production, all bottles in the region were hand- or mold-blown in batches, meaning that every bottle was different. It wasn’t until the 1910s, when it became possible to mass-produce Champagne bottles by machine, that a ‘standard’ 30cm by 8.7cm bottle began to emerge.
While it is this Burgundy-esque, thick glass bottle that is still the most commonly used one in Champagne, its consequent ubiquity unsurprisingly invited diversion from the standard. Since at least the 1950s, the Champenoise have been producing truly bespoke bottles that deliberately vary from the standard offerings.
Elongated neck
Taittinger’s prestige cuvée, Comtes, was an early example, followed by Laurent-Perrier’s Grand Siècle La Cuvée, with its inaugural 1960 vintage – both of which are housed within a bulbous bottle with an elongated neck. Other notable variants include Krug’s sloped-shouldered, fat-bottomed bottle, which was introduced in 1972. Nicolas Feuillatte’s Palmes d’Or cuvée, launched with the 1986 vintage, is housed in a distinctive black dimpled bottle, said to be in homage to a young opera singer that Feuilatte himself had fallen in love with, and the black pearls she wore during performances.
However, given the expense and upheaval involved in producing a bespoke mold – the need to update bottling lines, gyropallettes and, potentially, gift packaging and labeling – there has to be a good reason for producers to embark on an exclusive bottle. Furthermore, the time it takes to bring such bottles to market requires a certain amount of foresight, with the vessel in which secondary fermentation takes place being the bottle that it is obliged to be sold in. What might seem like a simple transition to add a point of difference is often the result of years of planning and great expense.
Nevertheless, a revived trend for bespoke bottles appears to be trickling through Champagne, with several producers, including G.H. Mumm, Champagne Drappier and Joseph Perrier introducing bespoke bottles in the past year, following in the footsteps of Bollinger, which in 2012 released its 1846 75cl ‘mini magnum’ bottle, intended to mimic the shape of a magnum and its ageing capabilities.
Advancing technology
But if anything has changed from the earliest
examples of bespoke Champagne bottles, it is the motivation behind their creation. Marketing is one of the biggest factors, but advancing technology, the declining trade in sur latte Champagne, increasing competition in the sparkling wine arena and growing environmental concerns are also driving change.
Last year, Champagne Joseph Perrier unveiled a new bespoke bottle with marketing in mind, with the aim of augmenting its brand. Five years in the making, the change was expensive to instigate for the house, which produces around 700,000 bottles annually.
“We had to change everything from the packaging and all the machinery,” says Jean-Claude Fourmon, president of Joseph Perrier. “The only thing that was the same was the height of the bottle. So it was a very long process with a lot of adjustments, but we are pleased with the results. It seems crazy, but you need to be convinced that it is a good decision, because it’s so complicated and is such a big change.”
The new Joseph Perrier bottle features a narrower “swan” neck for a smaller air chamber, with generous shoulders, which Fourmon says makes it “easier for the yeast to slide down the bottle”. While a narrower neck affords some technological benefits, discussed in greater detail later in this article, marketing was Fourmon’s primary motivation for a bespoke bottle, with the intention of building more value into its brand. Indeed, Fourmon confirmed that the launch of the new bottle would result in a small increase in retail price too.
“It was a risk for us, but Joseph Perrier was founded in 1825 and we have an authentic story to tell,” he says. “We wanted to offer something different that would raise our value and respect. It’s not a ‘bling’ offer. It’s bringing respect of the bottle and more value, and makes the quality of the Champagne more visible, with a bottle that was created with a difference.”
Similarly, Champagne Deutz – which is owned by the Roederer Group – also set out to differentiate its brand through the use of a bespoke bottle, initially launched in 1961 for its flagship Cuvée William Deutz. It wasn’t until Fabrice Rosset joined the company in 1996 as CEO and president that plans were made to house all of its Champagnes in that same bottle, which also has a thinner neck than the standard offering. Before Rosset came on board, Deutz had been “in decline”, having lost volume and recognition among the trade and sommeliers; the launch of its bespoke bottle through the whole range was at the heart of Rosset’s strategy to turn the brand around.
Differentiation
“My dream was to differentiate Deutz as much as possible from the vast majority of other brands,” says Rosset. “That was very marketing driven. I didn’t do it as soon as I took over because Deutz had been in decline globally. It can happen to good people and good companies. The company was facing bad times. We needed to be present and restore credibility and confidence in the brand.”
From the 2004 harvest, all of its wines were put into its bespoke bottle, with those bottles first coming onto the market in October 2007. The transition cost Deutz around €0.50 (43p) extra a bottle, Rosset says, plus additional costs to update bottling lines, maturation equipment and gift boxes.
“The implications were enormous and we knew that it would cost a lot,” says Rosset. “But I knew it would be better and I had that dream for Deutz. We had to convince the trade and consumers that we were in the same space as beautiful brands like Dom Pérignon, Krug and Ruinart. It’s part of a global strategy and I believe that the cost was justified.”
However, besides an ambition to set itself apart from other brands and to have a bottle that would “speak for itself in terms of the quality”, there was another motivation for Rosset’s decision to roll out a bespoke bottle. Having taken the brand from 600,000 to 1.2 million bottles, Rosset said he had been “deeply angered” by a number of people implying that this success must have been because of the use of sur latte Champagne, making the use of a bespoke bottle even more important.
“It was sending a message,” says Rosset. “It was a certificate of authenticity for my brand. We had just gone from 600,0000 to 1.2 million and a number of people were giving me a dig in the ribs and saying for such a development we must have used sur latte because the growth was so fast. Our distributors and sales forces were top notch, but had to explain to sommeliers that all of our bottles were made by us and us only. We are proving that with this bespoke bottle, which might resemble other bottles on the market, but is not the same bottle.”
Famous label
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The trade in sur latte Champagne allows a producer to sell Champagne that is already bottled, but not yet disgorged, to a house that can then complete the process and stick its own label on the bottle. It means that a bottle of Champagne bearing a famous label could have been made by anybody, provided it was in the Champagne region. Having your own bottle proves the Champagne has been made and bottled by the house named on the label only, which is a comfort to those buying expensive labels.
While this would have been a more motivating factor to have a bespoke bottle in the past, today the trade in sur latte is in decline. It is thought to account for around 20 million bottles of Champagne’s total volume, which in 2016 stood at 306 million. Furthermore, one of the goals of Champagne’s Project 2030, instigated in 2012 to improve the region’s long-term health, was to stifle the trade in sur latte.
A more significant factor shaping the development of bespoke bottles in Champagne is technology, and winemakers’ increasing understanding of the role that oxygen plays in the maturation of Champagne. In 2012, Bollinger launched its bespoke ‘mini magnum’ throughout its whole range, having started work on a mold in 2008 based on a bottle it had found in its cellar that was stamped ‘1846’. Critically, this bottle had a 26mm neck, narrower than the now standard 29mm, and was also longer at 93mm, rather than the 85mm standard length.
“We had the intuition that because this neck was narrower we would get less exchange of oxygen and that ageing might be slower,” says Gilles Descôtes, Bollinger’s chef de cave. “At that time in Champagne, we didn’t have the tools to measure all this oxygen ingress and the permeability of the cork. If you put a cork in a bottle, depending on the cork and bottle, the exchange of oxygen will vary. We know that but we didn’t have the measurement to be scientific about it. We had this intuition, because the age space – the empty space between the wine and the cork – was the same as in a normal magnum bottle.”
Much has been written on the impact of ageing Champagne in magnum compared with a 75cl bottle, with the general consensus being that a standard magnum format results in a more youthful Champagne because it holds twice the amount of wine as a standard 75cl bottle, but has the same neck size, ensuring an equal amount of oxygen is exposed to a much greater volume of liquid. Bollinger’s ‘mini magnum’, and indeed all bespoke bottles with a narrower neck, essentially reverses this idea, with 75cl bottles holding half as much liquid as a standard magnum, but with a narrower neck ensuring its exposure to oxygen is lessened, mimicking the properties of a standard magnum. However, scientifically proving this is still a work in progress for Descôtes, who points out that this will require close analysis of the same wine in corresponding bottles in the same cellar over the same period of time.
Descôtes notes that while the impact of oxygen ingress on a wine’s maturation is well established, it has been the subject of less investigation in Champagne than in other wine regions.
“Now, we are talking a lot about oxygen coming into the bottle, but this is really very new for Champagne,” explains Descôtes. “For many years everyone thought that because we had six bars of CO2 in the bottle no oxygen could get in. In 2008, when we decided to do this bottle we didn’t know anything about oxygen coming into the bottle – that was intuition. Now, the Comité Champagne is working a lot on this and we are working a lot with them on our side.”
Rising foam
Bollinger is one of the few houses in Champagne that uses jetting – a process whereby a jet of CO2 is pumped sharply into the neck of a bottle at the point of disgorgement, resulting in some foam rising up the neck to act as a barrier, further reducing the risk of any oxygen entering the bottle.
“Oxygen is really a new area, and very important in winemaking, in Champagne and especially at Bollinger,” adds Descôtes. “Only five to 10 houses use jetting at disgorgement. We are not thinking about fashion or trends, we are just doing the Bollinger style and trying to improve something and to drive it in a better way.”
G.H. Mumm is another big name to have radically altered the traditional Champagne bottle, launching a bespoke bottle for its limited-edition Grand Cordon bottle, which it describes as the most innovative design in the 189-year history of Maison Mumm. The bottle’s most distinctive feature is the Champagne house’s trademark red sash, which has been physically engraved into the bottle, which also has a longer and narrower neck than the standard. The Pernod-owned house enlisted Welsh designer Ross Lovegrove to create the new bottle, with actor Kellan Lutz featuring in its launch campaign. Its development was “driven by a desire to tear up the rulebook” and challenge the traditional codes of Champagne, says Charles Armand de Belenet, Martell Mumm Perrier-Jouët global marketing director. While the design had the potential to affect the riddling and disgorgement process, the indent in fact had a ‘helter skelter’ effect on the yeast, sliding in a circular motion around the bottle, with Mumm using cameras to tracks its movements inside the bottle to the neck. “The indented red sash necessitated a whole series of innovations to the traditional Champagne production process,” says Armand de Belenet. “A machine was specially designed to do a specific riddling and track the evolution of the yeast. Our motivation is about constant innovation and never being satisfied with the status quo.”
Like Bollinger and Joseph Perrier, Mumm’s Grand Cordon bottle has a narrower 26mm neck. It is made using recycled glass and weighs in at a respectable 835g, matching what became the standard weight in 2011. Technology and marketing aside, the environmental impact of a bottle has become an increasingly important factor for many producers in launching a new bottle, such is the social and commercial pressure to lower carbon emissions and transportation costs.
For some houses, concerns over a bottle’s environmental impact is the primary motivation behind a bespoke bottle. Most recently, Champagne Drappier released a new bottle for its Carte d’Or Brut with the main aim of raising its environmental credentials. For Michel Drappier, head winemaker and owner of Champagne Drappier, the launch of a bespoke bottle was part of a long-held ambition to better protect his wines and the environment, with marketing playing only a minor role.
Expensive undertaking
“I have always wanted to do it, maybe for the past 20 years, but it was out of reach for us because it was very expensive,” explains Drappier, who set the wheels in motion for this bottle in 2012. “We put the money on the side and we got stronger and then as soon as we could afford it we made it.”
The bottle, designed by Drappier himself, contains 87% recycled brown glass because it is not only easier to recycle, but filters 99% of ultraviolet light compared with green glass, which prevents 92% of UV rays from reaching the wine. Drappier’s bottle is produced at a factory north of Paris, ensuring that the impact of transportation is kept to a minimum, and features a molded stamp on its base to deter imitators.
“The focus was on oenology, not marketing,” says Drappier. “That’s why the bottle is nice and interesting, but it’s not a pretty bottle. It’s not like a perfume flask. It’s more on the wine side than the ‘bling’ marketing side, but that’s our DNA. We sell more to sommeliers and wine lovers, not to the discotheques.”
Like Bollinger, Drappier’s bespoke bottle favours a neck narrower than the industry standard, and was also based on the rediscovery of an old bottle found in its cellars, in this case from 150 years ago. Drappier said his new bottle was more a reinterpretation of an old bottle, taking the best of the past and combining it with the best of modern technology.
“Most of the bottles we found had this shape, were brown in colour, the punt in the bottom was deeper and the neck slightly narrower,” says Drappier. “It’s funny because much later they enlarged the neck to make disgorgement easier as they thought it would be an improvement. But today every oenologist will tell you it’s better to have a narrower neck. In a way, the bottles 200 years ago were more adept than 50 years ago.”
Environmental benefits
Perhaps Champagne producers in the 1800s, maybe more by luck than design, really did know better. They certainly seemed to be more readily using bottles of a colour and shape that we are only now discovering offer more technological and environmental benefits, as evidenced by the many producers that are now intuitively gravitating toward the past. Of all the recently launched bespoke bottles discussed here, all favour a narrower neck, which can’t be without good reason.
“We are looking to the past and trying to understand why we have this style and to understand our traditional processes,” adds Descôtes. “We also have curiosity for the future and are experimenting with new things and ways to make Champagne, but really it’s a balance between the two. It’s not really about looking at new trends, but understanding what’s in the past and making the style of Bollinger what it is and to keep it and drive it carefully.”
The last change made to the standard Champagne bottle was in 2011, when the Comité Champagne reduced its weight from 900g to 835g, driven not by quality control or development, but environmental concerns. This 7% reduction enabled the Champagne region to reduce its CO2 emissions by 8,000 tonnes per year, the equivalent of taking 4,000 cars off the road. While this change should be applauded, the rate at which producers are moving forward, or backward as the case might be, suggests that it may not be the last time the standard bottle receives an overhaul. While any change would be a huge upheaval, and unlikely to be taken lightly or, indeed, soon, in time the benefits of a narrower neck, for example, could prove too compelling to ignore.
