“You shouldn’t wait for a special occasion”: a conversation with Benoît Gouez of Moët & Chandon about champagne

How do you approach pairing champagne with food, especially Asian cuisine?

When I work on pairing with our chef (Jean-Michel Bardet), we always speak in colours. Aromas have colours. For me, Brut Impérial is white, yellow and blonde. I don't want to have intense colours; it’s delicate, it’s pale. With the vintages, we can explore more colours. I’m always looking for simplicity. Leonardo da Vinci said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. For our chef, I say use only three ingredients in the dish: the main ingredient, one to complement and one to contrast. Specifically with Grand Vintage 2016, you should avoid extremes. Don’t go into something too sweet or too acidic. Stay away from bitterness. 

Brut Impérial was once 11 grams dosage, and now it's seven grams. What’s driving this move toward drier champagnes?

There are three things. One is climate change. When I was a child, people spoke about green champagne made from unripe grapes. That doesn’t exist anymore. We always have a certain ripeness. So we harvest grapes with higher maturity, more sugar, more aromas, less acidity. Second, compared to 20 years ago, we use much more reserve wines, and I’ve extended the time in the cellars. Together, this means our champagnes are richer today and need less sugar to achieve balance. There’s also a global trend toward more lightness and freshness, because for me, lightness and freshness are synonymous with elegance.

Climate change is clearly affecting how you work. How are you responding in the vineyards?

Honestly, I’m not concerned. I believe in champagne intelligence. When I look at history, champagne always finds ways to adapt. We’re working on new adaptations and experimenting with hybrids that are resistant to disease. We’ve planted 600 different variations of Chardonnay, 600 Pinot Noir, 600 Meunier. We’ve also re-selected our own yeast and bacteria, because the ones we selected 20 years ago are no longer suitable. Champagne can seem like a traditional region, but in fact it’s very advanced. At Moët, we like to speak of purposeful progress, innovating for better quality and better sustainability.

You’re known as a tech-driven Chef de Cave. Can you share some examples of how technology is changing winemaking at Moët?

I was trained as an engineer, so I love technology, data, lab analyses. But I strongly believe that to make a great wine, you need a strong technical base. Yet if you only rely on it, you’ll make good wine, but never great wine. It’s like a chef: purely technical cooking is good, but you miss the emotion of a chef applying sensitivity to the dish. One example: traditionally we check fermentation three times a day. We found that wasn’t enough. So we developed unique technology: measuring fermentation speed every five seconds instead of every eight hours. With data management, we can predict with 99% accuracy, 24 hours in advance, the maximum fermentation speed. If it’s too high, the yeast eats all the nutrition too early and creates reduction. If it’s too low, fermentation takes too long and creates oxidation. Having this information in advance, we can adapt temperature, oxygen and nitrogen to prevent both. It’s technology in service of the pure expression of the grapes.

Ice Impérial is the world’s first champagne designed to be served over ice. How did the collaboration with Pharrell Williams come about?

At the end of the 2000s, we realised the champagne business was too dependent on end-of-year celebrations. We looked at summer and thought: people are relaxed, casual and wanting to have fun, which sounds like champagne. But we weren’t doing well in summer because champagne was seen as too formal and not refreshing enough. Sales and marketing told us people were adding ice cubes to their champagne. Instead of saying “no way”, we tried with Brut Impérial. It doesn’t work; dilution breaks the balance. So we created a champagne specifically to be served on ice. Ice Impérial is made exclusively to be drunk with ice. If you taste it neat, it doesn’t taste good. It’s made to be playful. Pharrell was excited to play with it. For the second season, he came up with the idea to undress the bottle and remove the sleeve for sustainable reasons. He created his own design.

Moët recently returned as the official champagne of Formula One after a 20-year absence. Why now?

We found that Formula One has evolved a lot in terms of fan base and values. It’s become much more feminine, much younger, and more energetic. We were the champagne of Formula One from the 50s through to the end of the 90s; it’s part of our DNA. For me, Moët is the champagne of the winner. But today we prefer to celebrate the team rather than the driver. It’s really about togetherness. It’s a good example of staying contemporary by revisiting our traditional codes. 

Where do you see Moët & Chandon going in the future?

We’re on a journey where we believe we have to revisit our past to create our future. It’s not about dreaming of who we’d like to be, but understanding who we are. We still have a lot to understand about climate change. In terms of style, I think we’re close to finishing the cycle with dosage. We’ll become extra brut. The next cycle will be for my successor. What we really want to focus on is Brut Impérial and Ice Impérial with Pharrell for summer. And Grand Vintage—it’s probably the best value for money in champagne. We really want people to be more aware of the non-prestige vintage category.

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