Producing the perfect bottle of GH Mumm champagne for Monaco’s Grand Prix

4MONACO’S grand prix is unimaginable without the champagne, but it takes years to produce that perfect moment of fizz.

Glittering Monaco is synonymous with the Formula 1 Grand Prix. Picture: Alamy

ON the terrace of the belle-epoque Hermitage Hotel in Monaco overlooking the legendary Grand Prix street circuit, all is chatty and convivial and oh so very French. There are chaps in highly coloured trousers and velvet moccasins who switch effortlessly among at least three languages, shouting above the dash and thunder of the Formula One cars.

Ladies in little Chanel-style jackets and very tall heels pick their way about with the gait of wading birds. I stand to one side and drink it all in, quite literally, because I have discovered the benefits of breakfast champagne and know life will never be the same.

It is May 25, 2014, and the 72nd  Grand Prix of Monaco is in full roar. I am a guest of GH MUMM, the prestigious champagne house that has sponsored that prized podium moment, the Formula One  “splash”, since 2000. This is the joyous occasion when race winners take the first, second and third places on the stage and the victor pops the jeroboam of GH MUMM Cordon Rouge and sprays all and sundry. Today it will be Nico Rosberg who scores the crown, with runners-up his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton and Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo, whose larrikin smile is so big and brilliant he looks as if he has swallowed a champagne-flavoured sun.

But my journey here started several days ago and so, too, did those cordon rouge jeroboams with the special laurels of victory decal, the famous red sash, and upside-down lettering on the wraparound sticker at the base (think of the camera angles when it is held aloft for a vigorous spray). Why jeroboams? “For volume and visibility,” says GH MUMM communications director Stephanie Mingam. We are in Reims, northeast of Paris, in the heart of champagne country, at the “F1 bespoke packaging workshop”. A small assembly line of women in grey dustcoats and sci-fi goggles are hand-pasting the special Formula One labels to the jeroboams, which will be packed in nests of straw and popped into sturdy crates, ready for dispatch to Monaco. Each weighs a sturdy 5.5kg. There is one each for the winner and the two runners-up and back-ups for “mishaps” en route.

I visit the 25km network of cellars in Reims, originally carved from chalky rock in 1827. The labyrinth is dimly illuminated by golden wall-lights, caves are secured by wrought-iron gates and jeroboams are hand-turned, or riddled, to settle the sediment as they gently age — an average of 2 1/2 years for cordon rouge, five years for vintage and seven for cuvee. There are about 25 million bottles resting here, cradled in the dry and dark. I learn that grapes are harvested by hand in mid-September and I soon realise that the French are not fickle consumers. Champagne is not just a beverage to add fizz and froth to special occasions but a deep-seated representation of region and terroir.

In a convoy of classic cars we meander through some of the eight key villages of Champagne – Ay, Ambonnay, Verzy, Verzenay (where GH MUMM first bought plots in 1840), Mailly, Avize, Cramant and the terrifically named Bouzy. GH MUMM has 218 hectares of this region under production, including 160ha of coveted “grands crus”. Corrugated fields are planted with pinot noir, meuniere and chardonnay grapes; there are 300 champagne houses, 15,700 growers and 14 international brands exporting to markets that include Australia, ranked number six, according to 2013 data, and buying a robust total of 6,023,165 bottles that year.

There is a “casual” lunch in the gardens of Maison Cordon Rouge, an historic townhouse in Reims that looks like a small hotel and does, indeed, have six guestrooms for VIPs and visiting champagne cognoscenti and that evening a dinner at the historic GH MUMM-owned Moulin de Verzenay hosted by chief winemaker Didier Mariotti.  “Champagne,” he declares with a touch of grandeur, “goes with everything but chocolate.” And of his favourite drop, the grand cru blanc de blancs? “Highly precise and incredibly fine … nothing is left to chance.”

The GH MUMM house, founded in 1827 by the Franco-German brothers Mumm, is now badged as Martell MUMM Perrier-Jouet, an integral part of the Pernod Ricard leviathan; it has had sporty and adventurous associations since 1904 when it supported a French expedition to the Antarctic and explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot was photographed atop an ice cap enjoying a celebratory swig of the sponsor’s fizz. By 1900, production was three million bottles a year, doubling by the 1970s; now selling eight million bottles a year, GH MUMM is the leading international champagne brand in France and third worldwide. Australia is the number one export destination and GH MUMM has been spreading the cordon rouge love, sponsoring Victoria’s Spring Racing Carnival and the Melbourne Cup and, naturellement, will be making a splash at the Melbourne Grand Prix in March.

And that distinctive cordon rouge logo? In 1876, a GH MUMM agent, Joseph Jourdan, came up with the idea to decorate bottles for special customers with a red silk ribbon in the style of the Legion of Honour. The rest, as they say, is l’histoire.

The connection between grand prix racing and champagne dates back to 1950 when Reims hosted the first French Grand Prix at the Gueux circuit just outside the city. It seems appropriate that the birth of a legend should have been in this gently rolling region of vines and bubbles and famously fertile terroir. The circuit, surrounded by wheatfields, is now dilapidated, with grass growing through the seating in the stands, but a bunch of committed volunteers are raising awareness and lobbying local government for its restoration.

 It was in 1966 at the Le Mans 24-hour race, however, that the first actual champagne spray took place, and it was by accident. The bottle was warm, the cork popped out, all around were spritzed and sprayed; the next year’s winner, Dan Gurney, repeated proceedings with a touch of panache, and so a motor-racing tradition was born.

Back on that surreal terrace at the Hermitage Hotel in Monaco, the word is out that British actor Benedict Cumberbatch is in the house. He’s interviewing the racewinners for a documentary. Rumours already abound that when Ricciardo clocked the Brit star, he grinned and said, “You’re that Sherlock Holmes bloke off the telly.” We laugh merrily and call for more champagne.

And then because I haven’t had enough giddy-headed excitement, I join the GH MUMM folk for a Diner Jeroboam de Legende at the Motorhome Lotus F1 Team, a pop-up affair where Damon Hill is in attendance and everyone is a-twitter when the young and handsome Swiss-born driver Romain Grandjean (who races for France with Lotus-Renault) appears. The libations are poured, most appropriately, from jeroboams – rose and cordon rouge – as waiters glide to and fro with dishes prepared in a kitchen annexe by a lightly perspiring Parisian chef with a Michelin star or several up his starched white sleeve.

We look up at screens showing footage of that afternoon’s victory podium and there is HRH Prince Albert of Monaco and his shapely bride, the former Charlene Wittstock, a South African swim champion. The GH MUMM folk must be very pleased with the coverage. Branding has triumphed. Princess Charlene is wearing a sleeveless white sheath dress with an elongated red stripe running the centre length. She is the living embodiment of cordon rouge.

Now, if Benedict Cumberbatch should appear as a grand finale to my red-ribbon journey, I am just going to have to faint and hope someone splashes me back to life.

Susan Kurosawa was a guest of GH MUMM.

The Melbourne Grand Prix takes place from March 12-15. More: ghmumm.com; australia-grand-prix-com.