Armand de Brignac is a limited-production prestige cuvée that has received phenomenal international critical acclaim. The Champagne was recently rated No. 1 among the world’s best Champagnes in a tasting competition of 1,000 brands, and is produced by the award-winning Champagne Cattier house of Chigny-les-Roses, France. The Cattier family has owned and cultivated vineyards in the Montagne de Reims terroir in the French Champagne region since 1763, and patriarch Jean-Jacques Cattier oversees the production of Armand de Brignac. Today, he tells Quintessentially what makes Armand de Brignac so special.

“When considering which Champagne to purchase for your next special occasion, perhaps something different is in order. Our family created the prestige cuvée Armand de Brignac in order to produce the finest possible Champagne with the strictest possible attention to quality and detail.”

“In each outstanding vintage year, my son Alexandre and I visit the best vineyards in the three most famous terroirs of our La Marne region of Champagne: the Montagne de Reims (home of our own village of Chigny-les-Roses), the Cote des Blancs, and the Vallée de la Marne. Choosing from among villages all rated Premier Cru or Grand Cru, we select only the grapes whose character and quality will allow us to meet the requirements of this special cuvée.”

“At our winery, we press these grapes on a traditional Coquart device and retain only the top fraction of the first pressing, ensuring that we obtain the purest and most desirable juice. For Armand de Brignac, this pressing is blended with that of harvests of two prior outstanding vintages, each obtained by these same careful methods. The bottles are then aged for at least three years in our cellars – considered among the deepest in Champagne, and thus most conducive to a slow aging process. At the final stage of their aging, the bottles are each riddled by hand – a process seldom done today – and then disgorged. The final touch is another unique one to Armand de Brignac – we use a ¬liqueur de dosage aged in oaken casks from Burgundy to impart a subtle “touch of soul” to the blend.”

“Of course, after going to all this work, with Alexandre and I supervising each step of the process and employing a staff of just eight of our craftspeople for the whole endeavor, the Champagne must be presented suitably. The Armand de Brignac bottle is unique in the world – it is an opaque gold vessel (silver for our Blanc de Blancs, and pink-gold for our Rosé) adorned with pewter labels – no paper is to be found anywhere on the package, and the bottle certainly stands out on a shelf of other wines.”

“The goal in all this, as I mentioned before, is to present something authentically luxurious and which does justice to the once-in-a-lifetime events at which Champagne is so often present. Armand de Brignac is not meant to overshadow these events, simply to commemorate them with a toast worthy of these special memories.”

For further information please visit www.armanddebrignac.com. Don’t forget that Quintessentially Wine – www.quintessentiallywine.com – can help with all your champagne requirements.