The climax of Dom Pérignon’s 2024 Révélations event begins in front of Ricardo Bofill’s repurposed cement factory, La Fábrica. As twilight descends, guests stand at individual plinths adorned with headphones and Champagne glasses illuminated from beneath. With Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 playing in the ears of celebs, chefs and journalists, we are invited to taste the new, 2015 vintage of what is arguably the world’s most famous sparkling wine. The man leading this exercise from the front, fully engrossed with eyes closed in reverence, is Dom Pérignon’s cellar master Vincent Chaperon.
It’s clear that for Chaperon, winemaking is an intensely cerebral and artistic undertaking. In an interview at Barcelona’s Palau Martorell museum the following day, his modes of expression oscillate between the numinous, poetic and technical. Asked to define the house style, he talks about ‘harmony’, ‘the aesthetic ideal’ and ‘the singularity’ of Dom Pérignon. He joined the brand in 1995 and has been working on defining the concepts behind the wine’s identity since then. ‘I would say that my first 20 years at Dom Pérignon have been mainly focused on understanding and appropriating the heritage; the history, the vision, the aesthetic, the making.’
La Fábrica, a phantasmagorical building set in the western outskirts of Barcelona, was an apt choice for a man whose love of architectural analogy quickly becomes apparent. The structure of wine ‘is the walls and the ceiling and the floor of the wine. That means all the elements that are participating in the contours of the wine.’ He describes wine’s texture as ‘the feeling of what is inside the structure’.
‘We have been working on words about concepts for years and years,’ he says. ‘I understood a few years ago that I had to complete the language but with the visual, with some sketches and design. It has been one of my quests and dreams to find some skills, some people to help us, in order to complete the language with sketches, like in architecture.’
I would say that my first 20 years at Dom Pérignon have been mainly focused on understanding and appropriating the heritage
Révélations represents a significant part of this effort. The annual, multi-day event was conceived of and introduced by Chaperon in 2021 and marks the launch of the year’s Dom Pérignon releases via the exploration of a new theme in a different city each time. Renowned chefs are drafted in to conjure high-concept menus for dinners that form part of a ‘journey into the creative path of Dom Pérignon’. Chaperon took over from Richard Geoffroy as cellar master in 2019 and sensed that ‘for everybody around the world, it was certainly the moment to move from “mystery to revelation”. That means to share a little bit more about the invisible; what is behind the brand and behind the wine as well.’
For 2024, Révélations spawned an exhibition named after the year’s chosen theme, Trace. Artwork, photographs and texts attempting to document ‘the imperceptible trace’ of the 2023 vintage were on display to the public for a week in July.
The notion of ‘a trace’ was derived from Chaperon’s tribulations in assessing the grapes grown in 2023 and his journey to the decision not to declare a vintage for the year. In the introductory pages to the book that accompanies the exhibition, he writes that he ‘wanted to touch the pulp of the fruit – feel the weight, texture, shape and contours in my mouth’ but ‘simply couldn’t.’
During a guided tasting of the 2015 Dom Pérignon and 2006 Plénitude P2 that were launched at the event in Barcelona, he explains that ‘2023 was a year of a huge quantity of grapes and very big size of bunches and grapes, which led to a kind of dilution. I was tasting those grapes and feeling this absence of texture, of tactility.’ This taste of absence, the ‘taste of what remains when there is nothing left’ as he writes in the book, is ‘the trace’ of 2023.
‘Tactility’ is the title of the menu created by chefs Albert Adrià and Niko Romito with Chaperon for the spectacular dinner held at La Fábrica. It’s a concept Chaperon refers to often, both at the tasting and during our interview. ‘The truth of Dom Pérignon is in the palate; it’s coming from the way Dom Pérignon is touching, the way Dom Pérignon is caressing.’ I ask him if he considers tactility the defining feature of fine wine. ‘Yes but it’s not just me. If you look to the patrimony and history of fine wine, a lot of people who have been, and who still are, very important in the world of fine wine will tell you the same.’ He uses a Burgundian tastevin, a historical tool used to check the texture of wine as it ages in barrel, to illustrate his point. ‘It’s called tastevin but taste is not “taste” it’s “touch”. It’s old French. The name of this old tool is telling us that from the ancient time, everybody was talking about not tasting but touching the wine.’
In 2018, at a retrospective tasting of the wines made during his 28-year tenure at Dom Pérignon, Geoffroy reportedly said that ‘to work at Dom Pérignon, one has to first do a master’s degree in philosophy.’ Chaperon seems very much in the same mould, which begs the question of whether the wine is likely to change much under his stewardship. ‘We say Dom Pérignon is about harmony – that’s a concept. So there is a lot of room to move around this concept,’ he says, adding that as long as ‘you’re still feeling and perceiving that Dom Pérignon is a harmonious wine, there are many variation and nuances [to explore]’.
Chaperon’s respect for Geoffroy is obvious and he says they were ‘very complementary’ when they worked together as a team. But the man from Bordeaux, who studied agronomic engineering, is also clear that there are differences between himself and his Champagne-born predecessor. Geoffroy, he says, tended to spend much of his time in the cellar and the winery. By contrast, he asserts, his entry point to the world of wine was nature. ‘I feel very good when I am in the vineyard – it’s the best place for me.’
Behind the glitz and glamour of the Révélations event is arguably an intellectual process that allows Chaperon to crystallise and organise his own creative ideas. There is occasionally the sense that he is still grappling with exactly where the boundaries lie in working as cellar master for a monolith like Dom Pérignon. Some of his answers highlight the tension that many winemakers must feel in attempting to hold a house style, the specifics of a vintage and their own influence in equilibrium. ‘I’m introspectively, as well as with my team, trying to find what would be the more adaptive way to handle the balance between what is personal and what is heritage.’
I want to bring something new to the notion of space; monoplot is something that has been much explored
That’s not to say that Chaperon is floundering when faced with the future. ‘Certainly, I’m working, and will work, on the dimension of space. Everybody knows that we have a big vineyard but we are not so precise and clear about the origin of what we use.’ When I ask the obvious question about a single-vineyard cuvée, he’s not enthused, the idea seeming too predictable and unimaginative. ‘I don’t think I will do a mono’ because it’s not Dom Pérignon. Dom Pérignon trace is blending and I need to blend. And I want to bring something new to the notion of space; monoplot is something that has been much explored. It will be something about being more clearly rooted locally. Between one plot and the 1,000 plots we have, there is space to do something.’
The future direction of Dom Pérignon is plainly the most diverting and absorbing subject for a man who will soon oversee the launch of the first vintages made in his own winemaking era. In Chaperon, the marque has a cellar master who seems not just engaged with but consumed by the task of giving it all the thought, analysis and reflection that could be required or expected.
