Champagne Devavry

Winegrowers’ portraits Champillon

Champagne Devavry

Cuvée Carbon, in Magnum,
Methuselah and Nebuchadnezzar

The Devavry family in Champillon has been making champagne for five generations, producing half a dozen wines on their ten-hectare property using traditional methods. With the help of his grandfather Georges Devavry, Alexandre Méa, the youngest of the family, succeeded in making a 2006 vintage Champagne so superb that he decided to promote it with an innovative bottle.

Champagne Devavry's Cuvée Carbon, the Methuselah box serves as an ice bucket.
Abreast of cutting-edge technology, and familiar with the international jet-set scene, Alexandre created the first carbon-coated champagne bottle for his delicious Cuvée Carbon and has registered the design. For maximum effect, he decided that the champagne would only be available in large format bottles: Magnum, Methuselah and Nebuchadnezzar. From Saint Barts to Saint Tropez, via Monaco, where he offered a bottle to Prince Albert at the Yacht Show, demand is growing among celebrities and jewellers are displaying it in their windows!
The name Carbon implies avant-garde style. And while this is true of the bottle design, the wine itself is made entirely traditionally. “Clean tasting and intense, with good acidity, 2006 was considered to be a year with the potential to improve with age. This vintage brut champagne, made with grapes from a single year, consists almost entirely of Grands Crus, with 80% Chardonnay from the best villages in the Côtes des Blancs (Avize, Chouilly and Oger) and 20% Grand Cru Pinot Noir from Ay.”
Alexandre has chosen excellence on the cru scale. His grandfather conducted the vinification process in the purest champagne tradition: pressing the finest, healthiest grapes on site, chilling for twelve hours, first fermentation at ambient temperature in stainless steel vats, bottling in March/April, a second fermentation in the bottle, and then six years in the cellar for this promising cuvee, before finishing with a very light dosage of sugar syrup (0.6 g/l).
Yves Chapier, president of the Sommeliers de Champagne-Ardenne, and an acknowledged expert in the world of champagne, was one of the first to taste the Cuvée Carbon, and gave the following assessment. “This vintage champagne has a pale gold colour with a lovely brightness; great finesse in the glass with a fine cordon of bubbles; the initial bouquet is very complex with buttery, brioche aromas, and yellow fruit; on the palate the attack is voluptuous and direct, confirming the first impression of finesse given by the bubbles. A superb champagne to enjoy with a meal!”
To help publicize and enhance the appeal of this exceptional cuvee, Alexandre came up with an idea for the bottle that is more to do with innovation than “bling”. The use of carbon in the aeronautical industry, as in Formula 1, has revolutionized the market. However, no one had thought of using it to design a body for a green glass Champenoise bottle. While it was an inspired idea, putting it into practice proved complicated and took three years to perfect.

The legislation for Champagne requires that the vinification process takes place in glass, which meant that the use of foil was out of the question. The carbon coating therefore had to be applied after disgorgement, when the bottle was ready to be shipped, and under cold conditions, so as not to damage the champagne. Made of very thin fibres just a few microns in diameter, the carbon “fabric” is applied onto the bottle by hand by a specialized craftsman, then covered with six layers of resin.

Alexandre Méa presenting Prince Albert of Monaco with a Magnum of Cuvée Carbon.

“It takes three days to obtain the Carbon bottle's attractive sheen, which is completely opaque and protects the wine from light. This delicate manual process is expensive and would not be worth doing for a 75cl bottle”. Alexandre has big ideas for his baby! “For the Magnum and the Methuselah, the wine is vinified in the bottle, for the Nebuchadnezzar it is transferred.”
The Carbon collection has a very glamorous look. Kinetic and modern, it is as intriguing as a painting by Takis. The black label with embossed gold for the champagne's name and year, ring-shaped collar and gold-plated top of the cork cage, all presented in riveted black lacquer gift boxes (available as an optional extra) transform the bottles into works of art. “Each Nebuchadnezzar (with a capacity of 15 litres and weighing approximately 40 kg) is numbered (only 200 have been made); already priceless, they are the latest must-have accessory for the multimillionaire owners of magnificent yachts in Saint Barts and Saint Tropez. The Magnum is more of a corporate gift, while the Methuselah is ideal for certain special occasions, such as the birthday of a blasé globe-trotter who already has everything...
These bottles were presented at the open­ing of the Caviar boutique in Saint Tropez, are displayed in the Hotel de Paris and the Hotel Hermitage in Monaco, in the win­dows of Frost of London jewellers, and are on sale in the Prince Maurice gift shop… Also available in these unusual bottles sizes is a Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru in the Nebuchadnezzar, and a 2005 Vintage Pink Champagne in the Magnum and Ne­bu­chadnezzar”. Displayed in a showcase and on a black lacquer stand on the family estate, the Cuvées Carbon sparkle like jewels!
Alexandre certainly dreamt of his Cuvées Carbon and he has finally managed to create them, and their remarkable design is sure to cause a stir in the world of champagne...

Marie-Caroline Bourrellis

Champagne Devavry

43, rue Pasteur
51160 Champillon – France
Tél.: +33 (0) 3 26 59 46 21
www.champagne-devavry.com