Rare Champagne: New House, Same Vision

Driving south towards Épernay along the famous Avenue de Champagne requires navigating an ever busy roundabout, Rond-Point de Champagne, on the outskirts of Reims. On a sunny day in June, rather than following the popular Route Touristique du Champagne and continuing on in the direction of Épernay, we took the first exit north-west, passing the gleaming glass offices and cellars of Bruno Paillard, along the quiet Allée du Vignoble, where, standing tall and proud, a quite remarkable golden structure cuts a striking figure across the flat landscape.

As the name indicates, the road is lined on either side with urban vineyards. The chalk headstones on the roadside tell us most of the vines are owned by Champagne Taittinger, but that’s not who we’ve come here to see. Reflecting the last of the evening sun’s rays is the recently built Piper-Heidsieck HQ, just one of many buildings that constitute the extensive premises of the EPI group’s three champagne houses.

Christopher Descours, head of the French luxury goods firm EPI, acquired both Charles Heidsieck and Piper-Heidsieck in 2011 (both had been under the same ownership of Rémy Cointreau since 1988). Although Charles has its own luxurious garden pavilion hidden away in the centre of Reims, the Heidsieck siblings share vineyards, buying contracts and the production warehouse on Allée du Vignoble, from where all the champagnes are blended, produced, bottled and exported.

The facility however, is divided into separate units and it is the contemporary golden palace of Piper-Heidsieck that first greets visitors through the gates. Designed by architect Jacques Ferrier, the glass building is encased in a see-through shell which, constituting a pattern of hundreds of small square metal plates that dematerialise as they rise, attempts to recreate the effervescence of champagne bubbles. The refection of the sky through the resulting pixelated mesh is a further effort to recall the grandeur of fizz.

However, our destination on this occasion was the building behind. Tucked away in one corner of the vast establishment is a modern reception, tasting and dining venue which serves as a Piper-Heidsieck shrine. Almost everything is branded – pillows, deck chairs, bean bags, parasols – and there is even a museum/trophy room downstairs. The chic dining room looks onto an open-plan kitchen; home, that evening, to a talented member of the Assiette Champenoise team, who worked tirelessly to satiate our appetites with subtle and elegant gastronomy.

Before dinner though, we shared a memorable tasting dedicated to the wines of Rare Champagne. In 2018, Rare – the prestige cuvée champagne of Piper-Heidsieck – was carved off as a separate entity (thereby forming the third champagne house in the EPI group). Veteran chef de cave Régis Camus went with it, and it was with Camus and Benoît Collard (global executive director of both Piper and Rare) that we met in June.

Explaining the separation, Collard told us that Rare has “always been very different from Piper in style … it was always seen as a tête de cuvée, or super vintage, so we felt that it should be seen as a house in itself.” Certainly, it’s always had a distinct image, sold as it is in a slightly protuberant gold-embossed bottle that exudes luxury and status. The main markets for Rare are apparently Japan, UK and the USA.

According to Camus, “Rare is a style with lots of freshness because we want a wine for long ageing.” To demonstrate its construction and show where this freshness comes from, the team had prepared a few still wines from different vintages that originated from two of the dominant Rare Champagne crus: Chardonnay from Villers-Marmery, and Pinot Noir from Vertus.

The Rare blend is always roughly 70% Chardonnay and 30% Pinot Noir, however the ingredients change with each vintage. “If we think we’ll make a Rare, we select the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, usually the same crus … but I never choose 100% from one cru,” Camus explained. A measure of Chardonnay from Villers-Marmery usually features in each blend, “bringing minerality and freshness”, yet it was the 2008 Pinot Noir from Vertus that really had Camus in rapture. Very light, almost clear white in colour, its appearance was indistinguishable from the Chardonnays, but its seductively smokey and reductive character was what earned it such lofty praise as “the spirit of Rare”.

The current release, Rare 2002, is a vintage with “lots of richness, but with classic 2002 characteristics”. Stocks are apparently just coming to an end and they decided to bottle the last commercial disgorgement with Mytik corks,  to “ensure consistency”. That means the next vintage, Rare 2006, is on the horizon, and we were fortunate to taste a bottle that evening. From a “very solar vintage”, Camus sees the same freshness in 2006 as in the Verzy 2008 base wine, a similarly warm year.

The older vintages we sampled, Rare 1988 and Rare 1979, were both produced by the previous winemaking team. For Camus, these treasures conjure images of old libraries, leather armchairs, cigars, and ashes leftover from the night before; characteristics that are typical of 25-year-old Rare vintages and an evolution cycle he expects Rare 2002 and 2006 to reproduce.

Rare Rosé, a champagne launched just two years ago with the inaugural Rosé 2007, has now moved onto its second release. “The biggest challenge is the colour and the aromas on the nose,” said Camus, adding that he is “looking for a very light, almost blueish colour to the rosé.” The colour, which comes from the celebrated Pinot Noir of Les Riceys, is much lighter in the new Rare Rosé 2008, and will “remain as it is forever”. Camus expressed an unexpected fondness for the new rosés in the range, stating, “I dream of a rosé vertical [tasting] in 20 years.”

As always, the mischievous pairing had a surprise or two up their sleeves that were unveiled over the course of our meeting. The first was a seriously delicious mystery champagne, disgorged on the morning of our tasting without dosage, the identity of which Camus refused to reveal until release. The second was a little harder to disguise; a gigantic 6L Methuselah of Rare 2002 (that’s 8 x 75cl bottles!), just twelve of which were produced in May 2016. By our count, there are now less than 10 left, one of which we are proud to be the sole distributor of in the UK.