Empire State of Mind

by Zack O'Malley Greenburg

  By 2006, Jay-Z was clearly on the lookout for a new beverage to hawk. Pundits theorized that he could have dreamed up Armand de Brignac to capitalize on his own Cristal boycott, and the stealth with which he promoted the champagne was simply a change in marketing strategy after overhyping Armadale. “Anytime you’re promoting a product, you’re trying to convince the public that it’s part of your lifestyle,” says Ryan Schinman, founder of Platinum Rye, the world’s largest buyer of media for corporations. “The minute that the public thinks that it’s part of your lifestyle because it’s a paid situation, it doesn’t help the cause.” Schinman points to McDonald’s ill-fated plan, launched in 2005, to pay rappers up to $5 for every radio spin of any song in which they mentioned the Big Mac. “The minute it came out,” he says, “it was inauthentic and the whole program was worthless.”12

  Accordingly, two days after the gold bottle’s inclusion in Jay-Z’s “Show Me What You Got” video, Armand de Brignac attempted to dispel rumors of a financial connection to Jay-Z. Representatives issued a press release explaining that the champagne was simply an “ultra-luxury product in the high-end champagne category” that was “making its North American debut this year, after enjoying success as a premium, high-end brand in France.”13

  Amid the aftermath of the divorce between Jay-Z and Cristal, Branson B.—the self-described street entrepreneur who’d introduced the star-crossed lovers nearly two decades earlier through the Notorious B.I.G.—found himself in France, hand-selecting grapes for his own Branson B. Cuvée champagne. During the three months he spent in the heart of wine country, he never heard a peep about Armand de Brignac or Ace of Spades. The notion that it had enjoyed “success as a premium, high-end brand in France” just wasn’t true.

  “Didn’t exist,” Branson explains, fishing a bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte Brut from an ice bucket. He pops the bottle and fills two champagne flutes.

  “Life,” he says.

  “L’chaim,” I return, clinking his glass.

  “How do you like this?” he asks after my first sip.

  “It’s nice,” I reply. “I’m kind of an amateur, but it tastes less dry than others I’ve had.”

  “Lightly fruity?”

  “Almost like a white wine.”

  “Like a chardonnay?”

  “Yeah,” I reply, suddenly self-conscious. “Is that . . . is that accurate?”

  “I recognized what you said.” He chuckles. “So it must be accurate.”

  Branson glances back at the bottle of Armand de Brignac.

  “You look at these pretty bottles, you’re thinking when you pour something out, it’s going to take you somewhere really special,” he says. “Now if you’re used to drinking champagne, and you pour something out of that bottle, and you don’t go no place, you’re going to be disappointed. You got on a ride, and you didn’t enjoy it, and you want your money back. You know what I mean?”

  I nod, recalling the first time I tasted Armand de Brignac—light, sweet, and altogether decent, but not mind-blowing.

  “The ride didn’t flip the way it should have, it went around the curve too slow, didn’t turn upside down,” he says, again seeming to read my mind. “When you’re spending that kind of money, you want to be excited.”

  Jay-Z may tout Armand de Brignac in his songs and videos, but to some champagne industry veterans, it’s at best a mediocre product masquerading as a high-end delicacy. “It’s the biggest rip-off in the history of wine,” says Lyle Fass, an independent wine buyer based in New York. “It tastes like shit. At least Cristal tastes good.”14

  Fass explains that Armand de Brignac appeals to the masses because of its very sweet taste, something frowned upon by most connoisseurs. The champagne’s sweetness comes from having what’s known as a high dosage. Toward the end of the champagne-making process, a mixture of white wine, brandy, and sugar—the dosage—is added to fermented champagne. The exact amount added is up to the producer; low dosage yields the dry champagne favored by wine experts, while high dosage produces sweeter champagne. “That’s why [Armand de Brignac] is popular among the hip-hop community, because it has a high dosage,” says Fass. “Cristal is a wonderful wine. But wine people, if they say there’s one thing about it, it might be that it’s a little bit too sweet.”

  Fass was working at a store in midtown Manhattan called Crush Wine & Spirits when Armand de Brignac came out in 2006. Though the large store frequently ordered cases of Krug, Moët & Chandon, and other fine champagnes, Armand de Brignac was never on their list. “We would not touch [Armand de Brignac] because we knew this was a scam,” says Fass. “It could have been easy money. We couldn’t do it. We couldn’t pull the trigger. It was just such a transparently obvious bullshit thing that was going on.”

  In response to such criticism, employees of Cattier, the French house that produces Armand de Brignac, like to tout their champagne’s accolades.15 In December 2009, for example, it was named the world’s best-tasting champagne by Fine Champagne magazine. To win the Fine award, Armand de Brignac bested one thousand other champagnes. Fass wasn’t impressed. “I saw that online, and I think it’s pitooey, horseshit,” he says. “Anybody who sits down and tastes a thousand champagnes, that’s humanly impossible—your gums will be rotting and the enamel will be falling off your teeth. These wine tastings are garbage. But that’s how a lot of secondary and crappy wines [market themselves], they win bronze medals or gold medals. Everybody has a wine tasting . . . There’s a lot of stupid people in the world.”16

  On the quantitative side of the champagne world, Armand de Brignac tends to score in the low nineties on the industry-standard scale that goes up to one hundred. Wine Spectator gave it an eighty-eight in 2008.17 That’s still respectable, but well short of other high-priced champagnes like Cristal, whose various vintages often flirt with one hundred. Dom Pérignon, which can be had for $150, usually scores in the mid-nineties. Armand de Brignac’s ratings place it on par with varieties of Veuve Clicquot and Taittinger that sell for $50 or less. Yet Armand de Brignac has sold 100 percent of every annual release of the $300 bottle; its highest annual unit volume thus far was forty-two thousand bottles. Representatives insist that demand for Armand de Brignac far outpaces the brand’s maximum output of sixty thousand bottles per year.18

  “Everybody should take a lesson who wants to sell wine that sucks,” says Fass. “Because it is probably the most brilliant marketing in the history of wine . . . What an amazing job to take a piece of shit wine and turn it into a $300 bottle of wine overnight.”19

  So why would Jay-Z get involved with a second-tier champagne? Because of the immense profit potential. Unlike vodka, which also has low production costs but produces a narrower spectrum of tastes, the ceiling on prices for champagne is nearly unlimited. Fass estimates that Cattier’s production cost for each $300 bottle of Armand de Brignac is a mere 10 euros (about $13). “The profit margin for that champagne is something I’ve never heard of before,” says Fass. “Why would a profit margin be that high? Because there are a lot of [investors] to pay out.”

  Assuming Jay-Z is one of these people, the connection could be through any number of outlets: the house of Cattier itself, the brand Armand de Brignac, the importer, the exporter, or the distributor. All of these entities are registered with an array of state and national government agencies in the United States and France. Theoretically, the link could be established with a little bit of sleuth work.

  My first call goes to the French offices of the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, the trade association that includes all the grape growers and houses of Champagne, France. A woman named Brigitte informs me that Cattier is 100 percent family owned, but that the brand Armand de Brignac might have a different structure. She suggests trying the French department of agriculture. An e-mail to the agency yields a reply from one Isabelle Ruault, who explains that the brand Armand de Brignac is registered to AJC International, an export company owned by J. J. Cattier. Ruault supposes the brand b
elongs entirely to the family, but without knowing AJC’s precise capital structure, the exact details are impossible de savoir.20

  Turning my attention to stateside bureaucracies, I place a call to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Washington, D.C. A representative redirects me to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which in turn points me to the New York State Liquor Authority in Harlem. There, a man named Kashif Thompson informs me that Armand de Brignac is distributed by Sovereign Brands, LLC, and imported by Southern Wines & Spirits.21 Southern is one of the largest liquor distributors in the country, and it’s known for having personal relationships with some of the biggest names in hip-hop. Fass noted this firsthand while working at Crush: “50 Cent wanted magnums of Patrón tequila, which are incredibly rare, and the leader of Southern dropped them off to our store, and 50 Cent picked them up.”22 A call to the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation turns up a list of Southern’s owners; Shawn Carter is not listed among them.

  The last link is Sovereign Brands, whose owner is listed as Brett Berish. Berish, I later learn, is an entrepreneur who distributes and owns a line of spirits called 3 Vodka. The brand was launched in 2004 as a partnership with Atlanta-based hip-hop mogul Jermaine Dupri,23 who overlapped with Jay-Z as a member of Island Def Jam’s executive ranks. I also discover that shortly after Armand de Brignac’s 2006 launch, Berish issued a press release saying that “Armand de Brignac and Jay-Z have not entered into any agreement, sponsorship or otherwise.” However, he didn’t specify whether there was a financial agreement between Sovereign and Jay-Z. Besides Berish, the only other owner listed for Armand de Brignac is Shannon Bullinger, Sovereign’s operations manager. If Jay-Z has a Dupri-style partnership with Berish, it’s not on the books.24

  Back at Branson’s spot in Harlem, I’ve lost track of time. It’s well past midnight, and our champagne flutes are nearly empty. We’re still talking about Armand de Brignac.

  “The funny thing,” he says, considering the bottle, “is I drank that before.”

  He points across the bar to a bottle of Antique Gold, strikingly similar to the empty Armand de Brignac sitting in front of us. “That bottle there, a friend of mine brought it back from Monaco,” he says. “It’s like sixty dollars, seventy dollars, eighty dollars in the store.”

  He motions back to the Armand de Brignac.

  “Armand de Brignac, this product already existed,” he says. “They just brought this name back, and they attached Jay-Z to it.”

  I nod, realizing the magnitude of what Branson has just said. Antique Gold, the champagne Branson’s friend brought back from Monaco, has been around for decades. Armand de Brignac, the one that started appearing in Jay-Z’s videos circa 2006, looks nearly identical and costs five times as much. Both are made by Cattier—the only real difference seems to be the pewter Ace of Spades label slapped on the more expensive bottle.

  Branson shuffles back behind the bar and starts to rummage around for something.

  “So that means that they didn’t have to go through a whole process [of starting a new brand],” he says. “Which would have taken about two years.”

  I empty my champagne flute.

  Suddenly, Branson emerges with a sheaf of paper. My heart leaps. Could this be the document that establishes a paper trail between Jay-Z and Armand de Brignac?

  “Jay and I have a relationship, we know one another,” says Branson, sitting down. “And here it is, I have this champagne, I’d like for my champagne to be in his environments [where] he sells products. If he can bring Veuve Clicquot [to the 40/40 Club], why can’t he bring Branson B. into his environment? That, I don’t understand. I have no idea.”

  Branson shuffles through the stack and produces a coffee-stained sheet of paper. I crane my neck, hoping to catch a glimpse of a contract, a document with percentages. But it’s something totally different. Addressed to Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter at the 40/40 Club, 6 West 25th Street, New York, New York, 10010, it’s a copy of the letter that accompanied bottles of Branson B. Cuvée to Jay-Z’s offices in 2006, shortly after Jay-Z announced his Cristal boycott.

  “I checked to make sure they received the product,” says Branson, continuing to leaf through the papers. “I didn’t get a response from him.”

  Branson’s words hang in the air for a poignant moment.

  “I don’t completely understand that,” he says.

  I nod sympathetically, but I completely understand. When it comes to business, Jay-Z is a cold pragmatist. He ditched Jaz-O, the boyhood mentor who showed him how to rhyme; he split with Damon Dash, the man who taught him how to sell CDs. He even shot his own brother in the shoulder for stealing his jewelry. Jay-Z parted ways with many of his former colleagues because he realized he’d outgrown them, or simply didn’t need their help; there’s no reason to expect he’d approach a champagne venture differently.

  That said, working with Branson B. would have made sense in other ways. Jay-Z’s champagne adventure started as a response to what he perceived as a racist statement by Roederer’s Rouzaud about rap culture. What better way to prove him wrong than starting a champagne brand with hip-hop’s own sommelier? Perhaps Branson’s entreaties never made it past Jay-Z’s gatekeepers. Certainly the duo could have come up with a more reasonably priced bubbly—Branson’s retails for $40 to $75 per bottle. But there are very few people in the world who can inspire others to pay $300 for a bottle of champagne, and Jay-Z is apparently one of them. Partnering on a cheaper champagne would have meant a smaller profit to split, and thus, it would have been bad business for Jay-Z. In Branson’s eyes, that’s why it’s so obvious that Jay-Z has a monetary stake in Armand de Brignac.

  “I couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t benefit financially,” he says. “Why would he do that if he didn’t have a financial stake? Why would he associate Shawn Carter with champagne and not benefit from it?”

  My head swimming and my eyelids drooping, I stay for another ten minutes of small talk. Then I thank Branson for his hospitality and head out into the bitter February night.

  Though my visit didn’t yield a concrete paper trail between Jay-Z and Ace of Spades, and my calls to various government agencies in the United States and France had yielded only circumstantial evidence, there was one last chance: a transatlantic trip to the birthplace of Armand de Brignac.

  The village of Chigny-Les-Roses, France, is so tiny that it seems nobody ever bothered to put street numbers on any of the buildings. Given the number of edifices in the town, it would be about as useful as numbering the pots and pans in one’s kitchen. Fortunately, I’m already with the Cattier-employed guide who will take me to the company’s champagne cellars.

  We walk down Rue Dom Pérignon and stop in front of an unnumbered house with all its windows shuttered. The gate in front has a sign that says CHIEN MÉCHANT—“Mean Dog.” I throw a wary glance across the yard.

  “The dog,” the guide assures me, “is dead.”

  She leads me through the gate, past the house, and into a garage whose floor is littered with dusty champagne bottles and elaborate metal contraptions used to insert corks. Then she flips on an electric lantern, and we descend a narrow spiral staircase some ninety feet into the ground. The temperature quickly drops from a dry, sunny 80 degrees to a brisk 45 degrees moistened by 90 percent humidity.25

  The guide explains that the cellars are about one hundred and fifty years old; they served as part of a vast network of underground shelters during World War II. Patches of the brick walls still bear burns from candles used to light the corridors when electricity went out during air raids. I’m still mulling this fact when we arrive in a room glimmering with golden bottles of Armand de Brignac. They hang by the dozen in racks, slanted at a slight angle so that sediment collects in the necks and can be removed easily in the next step of the champagne-making process.

  The spectacle of thousands of bottles sitting like gilded test tubes is quite impressive, but what really strikes me is t
hat the bottles themselves are completely blank. There are no labels on the front or back, and nothing to distinguish a $300 bottle of Armand de Brignac from, say, a $60 bottle of Antique Gold, which Cattier stopped producing in 2006—the same year the house started producing Armand de Brignac. (“It’s the old cuvée that’s been sort of resurrected,” a New York liquor store manager named J. J. Battipaglia would tell me upon my return to the States.26)

  After the tour is complete, my guide takes me back into the daylight and over to Cattier’s headquarters for a meeting with the company’s brass. First to greet me is Philippe Bienvenu, Armand de Brignac’s commercial director.

  “Bonjour, Zack!” he says cheerfully.

  He introduces me to a few more Cattier employees, including the family’s kindly patriarch Jean-Jacques Cattier and his son Alexandre (who enthusiastically informs me that his wife just gave birth to their first son, Armand). As we walk around the bright corridors of the Cattier headquarters, Bienvenu traces the origins of the company’s flagship champagne to Jean-Jacques Cattier’s mother, who first thought up the name in the early 1950s. “The name Armand de Brignac was created after the name of a book that Mrs. Cattier had read,” he explains. “She really loved this character, she found the name very elegant, and this is how she decided to use the name to create that brand.”27