Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/457084
40 { THE SOMM JOURNAL } FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015 IT SEEMS APPROPRIATE THAT THE HOUSE OF ROEDERER chose New York City and Los Angeles as the sites for their U.S. launches of its first new wine in 40 years. The East Coast event was held in the penthouse event space at the New Museum on the Bowery in NYC, overlooking a glittery cityscape that sparkled along with the 2006 Brut Nature Champagne, the first newly minted Roederer expression since Cristal Rosé in 1974. On the West Coast, the Polo Lounge in The Beverly Hills Hotel was headquarters for Brut Nature's stunning introduction to local sommeliers. "We always need to be in movement and moving forward," said Frédéric Rouzaud, Roederer's Managing Director and the current custodian of Champagne Louis Roederer Group, one of the only remaining luxury Champagne houses to remain in family hands. "We are very passionate about our work, and tonight I am very emotional about it." The wine was a few years in the making, a collaboration between Rouzaud and designer Philippe Starck. Rouzaud described Starck as a "very open man" and playfully says he drinks 20 bottles of Champagne every day with his wife. But, joking aside, the wine was created as a response to the heatwave of 2003, an event that began a house trend to reduce the dosage on all the Roederer cuvées. In this startlingly hot harvest year, the vineyards produced aromatic and intense grapes. For the next three years, Cellar Master Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon was steadily encouraged to make wines with increasingly lower dosages until the warm 2006 "solar year" (biodynamically speaking), when the first zéro dosage Roederer wine was born. The Pinot Noir–dominant wine was made from biodynamically farmed grapes from Roederer's vineyards in Cumières, a premier cru village near Épernay, known for producing grapes of great concentration, making this an intensely terroir-driven wine. The 2006 vintage produced about 60,000 bottles. The Zero Factor ROEDERER'S BRUT NATURE IS AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT BROUGHT TO LIFE: ZERO DOSAGE, ZERO ML, ZERO PRECEDENT by Lana Bortolot and Meridith May PHOTO: ADAM JAMES PHOTO: ADAM JAMES Xavier Barlier, VP/Marketing & Communications for Maisons, Marques & Domaines. Beverly Hills Hotel Executive Chef Kaleo Adams and F&B Director Stéphane Lacroix hosted our West Coast launch. The roulade of crab and avocado paired beautifully with the edgy-yet-floral profile of the Roederer 2006 Brut Nature. Frédéric Rouzaud from the House of Roederer, celebrated designer Philippe Starck and Roederer Cellar Master Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon at the Roederer Brut Nature launch party in NYC.