When people first get in touch about creating their own private champagne brand, they often describe what they have in mind by naming a champagne they already know. “I want something like Veuve Clicquot,” they’ll say, or “I want something like Krug.” Those are two of the best-selling and most respected names in the entire business, and yet the bottles most people have in mind when they say them are blends of grapes from many villages. You won’t see the words Grand Cru on their labels.
Even so, Grand Cru comes up in a lot of my conversations sooner or later. Understandably, many clients assume it must mean better quality champagne, and that if they want their brand to be the very best, Grand Cru belongs on the bottle.
When it does come up, I ask a simple question: why do you want it? Here’s why I ask, and what the answer usually decides.
Seventeen out of 319
I should say straight away that I lived with my family for twenty years in one of the Grand Cru villages, and the grapes from those villages are considered to be among the best in Champagne. The classification is real.
But there are 319 villages in Champagne, and only seventeen of them have Grand Cru status, the top level of the classification. Premier Cru is the next level down. Because everybody wants grapes from those seventeen, they attract a premium, and that premium becomes an additional element in the cost of the finished champagne.
Seventeen villages are also a very small share of the total, so inevitably the availability of Grand Cru grapes, and of champagnes made from them, is limited. If your ambition is to grow relatively large volumes of sales, it could quite easily happen that you can no longer get enough Grand Cru bottles.
So Grand Cru will certainly cost you more, and it’ll be available in smaller quantities.
The other side of the table
There’s another way of looking at it, from the champagne maker’s side.
If a champagne maker has access to Grand Cru grapes, which are in short supply, why would he or she use those grapes to make somebody else’s brand, unless he or she can charge a considerable premium for it? It’s the same logic that decides whether a champagne maker would take on someone else’s brand at all.
If a client still wants to pay that premium, fine, we can start looking. But it’s not necessarily the most cost-effective, or even the most sensible, way to go about creating a private champagne brand, particularly if the ambition is to sell a significant number of bottles.
I don’t think anybody would disagree with that, and I’d suggest it isn’t even a matter for debate. It’s more like the laws of physics. Things that are less available are usually more expensive, and if you can achieve your ambitions without them, then why do it?
Putting Grand Cru on the label has one more consequence. In some sense it can be an unnecessary constraint, because it restricts the flexibility of the champagne maker by forcing them to use only grapes from Grand Cru vineyards. And that isn’t necessarily the way to produce the finest quality champagne.
A map drawn a century ago
The Grand Cru villages were laid out a little over a hundred years ago, and the list has changed very little since. The criteria behind it relate to the soil, the climate and the way those villages face, which are things that don’t change over time.
What has changed, and changed spectacularly, is winemaking. The skill of the champagne maker is far more important than it used to be, and in my view that makes the two designations, Grand Cru and Premier Cru, far less relevant today than they were many decades ago.
Large parts of the Champagne region aren’t Grand Cru and never can be. The entire region in the south of Champagne, called the Aube, doesn’t have a single Grand Cru village in it. And yet it’s a very important part of Champagne, partly because roughly a quarter of all Champagne’s vines grow there, and partly because of the quality of what comes from them.
A name that never needed it
The classic example is Dom Pérignon. You’ll never find the words Grand Cru or Premier Cru on a bottle of Dom Pérignon, and nobody bothers about that. It doesn’t affect the sales of Dom Pérignon, or its status, anywhere at all. Its reputation is built around the name.
Whether putting Grand Cru on your label brings you a higher selling price or more sales depends to a large extent on who you’re selling to, and whether the people you’re selling to understand those points, or even pay attention to them. It’s far more important to focus on the story behind the brand, and the quality of the wine itself, than it is to become obsessed with Grand Cru.
One line in a range
Grand Cru is suitable in certain conditions, for clients who have specific ambitions, and equally it’s not suitable in others.
A client of mine set out to create a range of several champagnes under a single brand name, and one of them is Grand Cru. It isn’t meant to be the main seller. It’s a particular style of champagne, which will certainly appeal to certain customers, but it’s perhaps not the style most people are familiar with.
Most people drink what’s called non-vintage, which is a blend of two or three different grape varieties, and that’s the champagne most people know and recognise. Other styles have a slightly different taste and appeal to a slightly narrower audience. With a narrower audience, the demand for the bottles is slightly less, so you can afford to promote a Grand Cru champagne knowing that its sales volume is going to be a little bit less as well. Each champagne in the range appeals to different occasions and different consumers.
In that range, the limited supply isn’t a problem, because the volume was never meant to be large.
And if somebody has a large enough budget that they’re not concerned whatsoever about the price, that introduces a different aspect to the project. But most people want to be prudent with their investments, and to use them in the most efficient and effective way.
Settled before it starts
I’ve never yet had a client who absolutely insists on Grand Cru. Some are tempted by the idea, and I explain the potential disadvantages: the small availability, the extra cost, and the way Grand Cru and Premier Cru are often misunderstood by consumers. Once they have a better understanding of the situation, clients are usually much more flexible and open to other suggestions.
It all gets settled at what I call the briefing, the very first stage of our work together. The client sets out what he or she would like to achieve, and I offer suggestions about the best way to go about it. That’s when we identify any conflict between the number of bottles the client expects to sell and the availability of Grand Cru champagnes. If there’s a discrepancy, it becomes apparent straight away, and there’s no need for any sort of dispute.
If you get too hung up on Grand Cru, and to some extent on Premier Cru, you’re depriving yourself of some of the best quality and least costly champagnes that are available. So when the words come up at the briefing, I’ll ask you why, and the answer will decide what we go looking for.
If you’re thinking about a private champagne brand of your own and wondering whether Grand Cru belongs in it, the next step is a conversation. We’ll start with what you’d like the brand to achieve and how many bottles you hope to sell, and work out from there what’s worth paying for. Book a call.