A few weeks ago, I stood with a group of slightly tipsy drinks industry specialists in a dusty vineyard near the village of Courmas and listened as a beardy French chap proclaimed a coming revolution in Champagne-making techniques and extolled the virtues of a hi-tech tractor called Bakus.
It was hot. We had been outside for quite a while. My mind began to wander. I found myself thinking about a dinner I had once – with Scarlett Johansson, yours truly and 80 or 90 VIPs, one of whom had bought a case of 100-year-old Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage Champagne at an auction earlier in the day. During an interval between the hairy crab and the braised pork, Scarlett, who was Moët’s suitably effervescent ambassador at that time, was asked if she would like to stand up and say a few words. She sprang to her feet and exclaimed: “A few words!” When the applause died down she went on to congratulate Paul Dunn, a millionaire philanthropist and the winner of the auction, for his purchase. Those six bottles of uncommonly old wine had cost him $100,000 – about $3,000 per glass, if he were to drink the stuff – with the proceeds going to the Nature Conservancy, an environmental charity. “Our planet,” he said, when it was his turn to speak, “is not ageing as well as this Champagne.”
Tim Coppens
What a gracious and well-phrased remark, I thought at the time. I have often had occasion to remember it in the years since. And it came back to me once more in the vineyard the other day, listening to the French guy talking about his fancy tractor.
This was Émilien Boutillat, the 36-year-old cellarmaster of Piper-Heidsieck, one of the most distinguished of the historic Champagne houses. In addition to being a top winemaker, Boutillat is also a thoughtful and impassioned spokesman on matters of environmental and social change and their bearing on the future of Champagne production. Almost his first move when he took the job at Piper-Heidsieck in 2018 was to initiate a three-year programme that resulted in Piper-Heidsieck, together with its sister brands Charles Heidsieck and Rare, becoming the first houses in Champagne to achieve B Corp certification, which rates a company’s environmental and social impact, in 2022.
Nor did Boutillat wish only to praise his tractor. (Though I came to accept that the tractor, or “vitibot” as he insisted on calling it, deserved the praise: safe, efficient, 100 per cent electric, fully autonomous, freeing up human beings to perform the more complex roles necessary in sustainable farming.) He spoke, too, about the importance of understanding vineyards as individual ecosystems and of ensuring that they remain connected to the larger and more biodiverse ecosystems in or alongside which they exist. To this end, Piper-Heidsieck had commissioned an independent study of its 16-hectare holding at Courmas, resulting in a complete inventory of its flora and fauna, and a programme designed to enhance what Boutillat referred to as its “ecological connectivity”.
