In 1964, champagne home Veuve Clicquot ran an unorthodox promoting marketing campaign pairing a bottle of its glowing wine with a greasy, all-American hamburger. “Apres l’opera”, or “After the opera”, the copy learn, which appeared in magazines such because the excessive forehead New Yorker.
Whereas the pairing of excessive and low tradition has grow to be mainstream lately, on the time it was a subversive notion within the rarefied — and at occasions stuffy — world of champagne.
“It’s an affiliation which means you’re simply within the second, in pleasure, as a result of it goes very properly collectively,” says Veuve Clicquot chief govt Jean-Marc Gallot. “Out of the blue it’s not sacrilege to drink a glass of champagne with a burger — that’s magical.”
For Gallot, who will rejoice his 10-year anniversary main the revered champagne home in September, the spirit of that Sixties marketing campaign has been the inspiration behind his technique to develop the corporate.
As a part of the LVMH luxurious group managed by French billionaire Bernard Arnault, Veuve Cliquot doesn’t publish numbers on its efficiency as a model. However it’s already among the many greatest champagne homes on the planet when it comes to gross sales and volumes produced, and “by very, very far the largest champagne home within the US”, Gallot says. To proceed increasing, the chief govt’s purpose is to multiply the events the place individuals suppose to drink champagne.
“The way forward for champagne is to not be a drink reserved for sure individuals and on sure events. An enormous alternative for development for us — significantly in North America, america, Canada, but in addition in Asia, Japan or south-east Asia or Africa — is with individuals who haven’t had the chance to drink champagne aside from for events that had been very formatted,” he says.
“In brief, let’s break the chains and be a lot freer in our strategy to consuming champagne.”
That perspective has not at all times been shared by others within the trade — reflecting a French penchant for custom and the correct approach of doing issues. About eight years in the past, the chief govt and his groups launched a line of champagnes that was designed to be drunk on ice — an enormous no-no for purists — adjusting the sugar dosage to account for dilution because the cubes melted.
They pushed the thought additional, suggesting drinkers might add substances corresponding to cucumber or grapefruit to make champagne-based cocktails. “We examined round 100 substances that can can help you have a brand new and stunning expertise,” says Gallot.
Many disapproved. “A very good half of my colleagues or opponents cried foul, saying, how will you do such a factor?” he says, admitting that almost all of individuals “are very traditional of their strategy to champagne”.
However Gallot was undeterred, particularly when he noticed the thought gave the impression to be interesting to a special set of consumers in search of a much less conventional strategy to the drink. “I believe some could have had the remorse of not having completed it and or the jealousy that this was created by somebody aside from them,” he says.
The incident sums up the working surroundings Gallot is attempting to create at Veuve Cliquot — one the place individuals “work critically with out taking your self critically”. It marks a shift in tone from the formalities of the tight-knit champagne world, during which manufacturing is restricted to a delimited space of France centred across the cities of Reims and Epernay.
The chief govt has spent his whole profession working in luxurious, however solely got here to wine and spirits in a while. He began out in advertising and marketing at Richemont-owned jeweller Cartier, then did stints at Italian shoemaker Ferragamo and silversmith Christofle, earlier than becoming a member of the LVMH group in 2003 as president for North America at its flagship model, Louis Vuitton. After six years on the trend label that included overseeing a reorganisation of its operations in Europe, Gallot was requested what else he was thinking about doing.
“I answered: wines and spirits, and particularly champagne,” he says. In 2009, he was appointed president of LVMH’s champagne home Ruinart.
At first, the training curve was steep. Vogue manufacturers and wine and spirits homes function on very completely different schedules, with the previous releasing new collections each few months and the latter taking years to deliver merchandise to market. Managing groups that ranged from gross sales individuals interacting with high shoppers and 5 star resorts, to agricultural consultants was a special problem — one he has tried to handle by emphasising communication and inspiring groups to spend extra time speaking to one another.
It’s a lesson he realized whereas managing Ferragamo within the US after the September 11 assaults — a time he describes as “essentially the most troublesome second of my skilled life” — because the enterprise plunged and workers processed their concern and grief. “When troublesome choices must be made, you must talk, talk, talk . . . you must meet everybody, you must be a visual and delicate interlocutor,” Gallot says.
Now, whether or not he’s working at his workplace in Paris or in Reims the place Veuve Clicquot’s manufacturing takes place, he begins his day checking in on the vineyards, calling his managers if he thinks the climate might have an effect on the grape harvest.
“You have to be extraordinarily curious and humble [as you] uncover this historical past and this experience. Whenever you speak to a chef de cave [cellar master], while you speak to a winemaker, while you speak to somebody in manufacturing — they’ve jobs that you just wouldn’t have imagined,” he says.
Gallot is a believer in versatile administration, preferring to maintain the door of his workplace open and stopping his agenda from changing into filled with a minute-by-minute schedule so he can stroll the halls and spend much less structured time along with his groups.
“For me, a day is having plans, sure, and organising conferences, dealing with topics which can be important, however above all it is very important go away free and open time for the sudden and what I name the gratuitous act. You stroll, you meet somebody, you discuss a topic. That is the place an amazing thought or challenge can come from.”
He says the frequent expectation of executives throughout the group is “to have the flexibility to work with creatives.”
Whether or not at a trend model or a champagne home, the inventive director or chef de cave “is the one who will drive a imaginative and prescient, a mode and a course for the home . . . What is anticipated of us, what is anticipated of me, is to have the flexibility to place the creator in the absolute best situations to work”.
A particularity of the champagne enterprise is its excessive dependence on nature to find out whether or not a harvest will go properly. “We aren’t in management of what’s going to occur this yr . . . It’s an amazing trainer of humility.”
This issue has grow to be more and more troublesome to foretell as local weather change alters climate patterns and rising seasons. Final winter was one of many rainiest on document in France, for instance. Within the Champagne area, harvests within the twentieth century used to happen in mid-October, however by the top of the century had been happening in September and extra just lately in August, in keeping with Gallot.
“We all know it’s coming, we’re doing quite a lot of work on the soils, on the grape vines too. We’re solely simply starting as a result of we don’t but have all the weather and we don’t but have all of the options. However we all know that our career will evolve,” he says.
“Will we in the future do mechanical harvesting at evening as an alternative of human harvesting in the course of the day? It’s doable,” he provides. The secret is to stay agile and inquisitive “attempting to seize every part that’s occurring and making one of the best use of it”.
Within the shorter time period, the champagne trade is contending with softening gross sales after a two-year growth as individuals indulged at residence in the course of the pandemic. LVMH’s wine and spirits division was the one one the place gross sales fell final yr, largely as a consequence of a pointy drop in demand for cognac within the US, however there was additionally stress on champagne.
Gallot says gross sales are “nonetheless properly above” 2019 however that 2024 is “not going to be fully simple”. “Gross sales ranges could also be barely beneath what we’ve skilled lately, however for me it’s a pretty easy adjustment. I’m not pessimistic.”
The tempo of winemaking has additionally taught the chief govt to take a broader, longer-term view. “If solely as a result of the bottles spend between three and 10 years within the cellar relying on the classic, the connection with time may be very completely different in spirits and wines than it’s in trend. So it teaches you to place issues in perspective,” he says.