Champagne Charlie returns to US after 37 year absence

Transported across the Atlantic by sail in honour of its namesake, Charles Heidsieck’s “Champagne Charlie” is being launched in New York today after an absence of 37 years in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the house’s peripatetic founder and namesake.

The latest Champagne Charlie, the first release of the special blend since 1985, is a blend using a very high 80% of reserve wines with 52% being Chardonnay and 48% Pinot Noir. The final 20% comes from the 2016 vintage, cellared in 2017.

“After tasting the 1983 Charlie, I asked, ‘How can I replicate that taste in less time?,” cellar master Cyril Brun said last month in New York harbour on board the Grain de Sail that transported 1,440 bottles of the special cuvée to America via sail. “I knew I would need a whole lot of reserve to do that,” Brun said, “perhaps more than was ever used in Champagne before.”

In spite of the amount of reserve, the new edition of Charlie is amazingly light and ephemeral on the palate, elegant to the extreme, but with sufficient finishing acidity, somewhat singular among têtes de cuvée. Imported by Folio Fine Wine Partners, it goes on sale today at $700 a bottle in the US, which was allotted about one-third of its total production. Previous editions of Champagne Charlie were released in 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1985.

The wine reached the United States in May after an almost month-long trans-Atlantic voyage aboard the modern merchant sailboat, Grain de Sail. It began its adventure in Saint-Malo on the Brittany Coast, and the total crossing of almost 400 miles was completely under sail.

Grain de Sail – the name of both the company and the ship – is committed to shipping wine from France to the US under sail as part of a three-leg voyage that takes medicines and humanitarian supplies from New York to Haiti, then transports raw cacao and coffee back to France for processing.

The founder of Charles Heidsieck helped introduced Champagne to America, travelling by sailing vessels, of course, in the middle half of the 19th Century by crisscrossing the country selling his wines. He became feted for his zeal as “Champagne Charlie”. However, during the Civil War he was imprisoned as a spy for the Confederacy.

The house also announced that during its bicentennial celebrations, Charles Heidsieck will also release a special edition of its Brut Réserve Collector Edition, re-imagined by French artist Catherine Gran. It will be available for purchase from August 2022.