Dom Pérignon offers first taste of 2018 vintage in glittering Bilbao bash
Dom Pérignon pulled out all the stops for its annual party in Bilbao, Spain last week, delighting a starry guestlist with a performance by Tilda Swinton, and an exclusive tasting of its unreleased 2018 vintage.
On 4 June, a star-studded line up of guests touched down in Bilbao, Spain to attend Révélations – Dom Pérignon’s annual event. Among them were Solange Knowles, Tom Blyth, Alexa Chung and Benedetta Porcaroli.
The evening kicked off with a talk at Carreras Mugica gallery, Bilbao, dedicated to Pré-Assemblages 2025 2025, under the theme of ‘Place’. As part of the seminar, Vincent Chaperon, Chef de Cafe of Dom Pérignon and French artist Claudine Drai discussed how each Dom Pérignon vintage was guided by creative intuition and the singular expression of the vineyard.
“Beyond grape variety and the year’s climate, what remains permanently within the expression of the vine is the Place,” said Vincent Chaperon, Dom Pérignon chef de cafe.
Tilda Swinton takes to the stage
“Place is a space where essence is determined by a structure that maintains the right relation between its elements,” added artist Claudine Drai. “Place expresses a very specific energy”.
The evening continued with ‘House of Gestures’, a performance co-created by Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton and curator Oliver Saillard. Inspired by Dom Pérignon, the show was presented in partnership with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Through a poetic and immersive approach, ‘House of Gestures’ explored the relationship between body, space and creation – exploring the notion that creation is a never-ending process.
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Champagne rooted in ‘space and authentic presence’
“With performance, we like to create a free zone where something honest and original can occur and become a shared experience in real time. A great Champagne has much in common with this idea. Both are rooted in space and authentic presence, not representation or interpretation,” added Tilda Swinton.
Guests were also invited to discover Dom Pérignon Vintage 2018 through a dedicated Solo Tasting presented at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao – the first vintage fully shaped by Vincent Chaperon as chef de cave – who replaced former cellar master Richard Geoffroy in 2019.
The 2018 expression is due to hit the market later this year.
The ‘smallest blend ever’
It follows fresh off the heels of the launch of a Champagne from its 2017 harvest, which yielded the prestige cuvée’s “smallest blend ever” due to the “extreme” weather conditions, according to Chaperon.
“It is the smallest blend we ever did,” he said at a London launch event in March, adding, “It is 15% of a standard harvest, so only 2-3 months’ worth of sales, so it is very small.”
Chaperon said that it used to be the policy to only make Dom Pérignon in years when there was enough high-quality fruit to make a decent quantity of the prestige cuvée.
