Champagne ice breaker

MOET & Chandon is changing the rules about champagne. Its new Ice Imperial is designed to be drunk with ice. In fact it shouldn't be drunk without it.

Moet

THERE is perhaps no agricultural product more governed by rules than champagne - from where the grapes are grown, to how they are grown, to the type of grapes grown, to the amount of grape juice from each pressing, to the age at which the wine can be sold and so on. And the rules go right through to the way the end product is consumed.

Champagne, connoisseurs will tell you, should always be served chilled, preferably at 7C (which, by the way, is best achieved not in a refrigerator but by placing an unopened bottle in an ice-bucket filled with half ice and half water for 20 to 30 minutes) and it should be served in long-stemmed flutes or tulip-shaped glasses designed to enhance the flow of bubbles to the top of the glass and to concentrate the aromas of the wine.

These are the accepted wisdoms of serving champagne and, for the most part, consumers have been willing to comply. But drinking champagne in a wide-bodied wine glass and with ice cubes? Quelle horreur! For most lovers of champagne the idea is unthinkable but that’s exactly what one of the world’s oldest and largest champagne houses is betting will be the next big thing in champagne. Moet & Chandon Ice Imperial is a champagne designed exclusively to be drunk with ice and, in fact, it shouldn’t be drunk without it.

The idea for the new champagne came from observing how people were drinking the wine in certain warm-weather environments. According to Moet & Chandon chef de cave Benoit Gouez, fashionable people in the glamorous beachside bars of the French Riviera town of St Tropez had been ordering champagne with ice for some time for a refreshing hot summer’s day drink. “But they do it with existing champagne and if you have it that way, in my opinion, you don’t get a good experience,” Gouez told WISH at a series of events held in Miami, Florida, earlier this year to launch the new champagne concept to members of the media from around the world.

“Classic champagne has been made to be balanced on its own. Ice lowers the temperature, it dilutes the wine and if you put ice with a classic champagne within a few minutes you get something watery and something that loses its identity in terms of its aromatic signature. Nevertheless, people continue to ask for it so the [impetus] to produce Ice Imperial was because people were asking for champagne with ice and we believed that there was a great opportunity for additional business. And I would say, with this wine we are using the ice as an ingredient. It’s saying, okay, the ice is going to change the balance of the wine so, in a way, we have to make it unbalanced in order to find the balance with the ice.”

The new champagne was tested in St Tropez last year to see how drinkers would react to it. Consuming Ice Imperial without ice is not recommended, in fact the message around the neck of the new white-lacquered bottle clearly states to drink it with ice. The champagne is made from a blend of pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay grapes and is sweeter and fruitier than the classic Moet & Chandon Imperial.

“I think if you taste it on its own, for most of us it’s going to be too much,” says Gouez. “But once you add the ice, suddenly you get the right balance. The ice really is an ingredient. Building the intensity with pinot noir gives it more richness on the palate but there is another dimension and that is that people are looking to be refreshed, and [that comes from] the acidity and the bitterness.” It’s true that Ice Imperial relaxes into a something very drinkable as your ice melts in the glass. But, as you would expect from a winemaker who considers the ice an integral part of the champagne, there is a precise way to drink this drink.

“I would say it’s something like a 50/50 ice-to-champagne ratio,” says Gouez. “And it’s better with large, thick ice cubes rather than crushed or small ones that melt too quickly. You just need three good-sized ice cubes. But we don’t want to make it too formal and we don’t want to bother people with too many guidelines because part of the concept is being free to let people go for what they like.”

The Miami launch of Ice Imperial consisted of a series of events held at several hotspots around the city, including a private residence on Hibiscus Island, Soho Beach House and the unique Stiltsville, which is a group of wood stilt houses built in the 1930s and located 1.5km south of Cape Florida on Biscayne Bay. The events were designed to give guests the freedom to explore different ways to drink the champagne, either with food, during the day or in a cocktail party situation.

The Ice Imperial was served in cabernet-style glasses, with ice of course (which, for a cocktail party means two waiters are required, one to serve the wine and one to add the ice) but also on offer was a smorgasbord of
fruity garnishes such as berries and various citrus fruits that are intended to give the champagne a summery flavour. It’s as far removed from the traditional way of drinking champagne as possible.

Typically, Gouez says, it takes about five years to create a new champagne from scratch but with Ice Imperial the process was a little faster. “My team is always experimenting and developing new things and so when the marketing department spoke to us about this project I found I had a few things already in my pocket,” says Gouez. “But it’s not purely a marketing initiative or purely a wine initiative, it’s really been a collaboration and we have worked together every step of the way on this.”

The champagne will launch in Australia later this month on Hamilton Island as part of the island’s Race Week festivities but don’t expect to find it at your local Dan Murphy’s anytime soon. Around the world the  wine will only be available through a select group of bars, restaurants, hotels and resorts, in part to control the way consumers drink it. “It’s to educate people to personalise it with garnishes, which is really part of the experience,” says Moet & Chandon CEO Daniel Lalonde. “If you just see it on a shelf in a grocery store then I think you lose that specialness of the product.”

It’s also a clever way to reach new customers for champagne. By taking the formality out of how it’s consumed, Ice Imperial is likely to appeal to a younger demographic although Moet & Chandon’s international marketing and communications director, Marc Jacheet, is keen to point out that Moet Hennessy does not market its products to young drinkers.

“Let me say something very clearly ... we do not encourage people to drink at early stages. We are in the better drinking business not the more drinking business and we don’t have any marketing activities for people below 25 years old,” says Jacheet. “Now, to answer your question, yes, probably because of this idea of fun, of fresh, of free etc, it will touch a more hip or trend-conscious consumer and, generally speaking, you will find that in the younger generation but I would say that would be people aged between 25 and 40.” 

As well as catering to people’s changing tastes there is a business reason for launching a product that changes the way people consume champagne. Lalonde says that traditional champagne is, in large part, a seasonal drink and that season is relatively short: the Christmas and New Year period. “Outside of France it’s true that champagne consumption is often associated with special moments at year end and we wanted to really find a way to deseasonalise champagne and to have it more a part of a person’s regular activities, daily or weekly, to change the modes and the moments of champagne,” says Lalonde.