James Suckling Interviews: Lucie Pereyre de Nonancourt

James Suckling Interviews is a new Web series at JamesSuckling.com featuring innovative and influential winery owners, winemakers and industry notables representing the new generation that is shaping tastes, trends and techniques in the greater wine world. This is the first of a biweekly series.

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Lucie Pereyre de Nonancourt is the fourth generation of the family-run Champagne Laurent-Perrier. She joined the house in 2019 and today her mother, Alexandra Pereyre de Nonancourt, manages Laurent-Perrier with her sister, Stéphanie Meneux de Nonancourt, and they continue to innovate on a legacy that began in 1939 when her great-grandmother, Marie-Louise de Nonancourt, purchased the Laurent-Perrier estate. Laurent-Perrier has been family-run since its founding in 1812 by the Pierlot family, and today it remains the largest family-run Champagne house in the world.  

Susan Kostrzewa recently spoke with Lucie about Laurent-Perrier’s Grand Siècle prestige cuvee and the current N.26 iteration – JamesSuckling.com's 2023’s Wine of the Year – as well as the house’s vanguard approach to sustainable practices, maintaining a distinctive house style in the midst of increasingly unpredictable weather and growing conditions, and why Champagne as a category is built to grow and last. Edited excerpts from the interview are below. Susan is a wine, food and travel writer, editor and educator and the founder of Resplendent Ink, a content strategy consultancy. She is the former editor-in-chief of Wine Enthusiast Media and has co-authored numerous books on wine, food and travel.

Lucie, congratulations on being selected as Wine of the Year 2023 by James Suckling and his team of tasters. N.26 Grand Siècle is the last to have the 2008 in the blend, a vintage that your winemaker said was made unusually powerful due to its difficult and unusual growing environment and that added significantly to N.26’s character and greatness. Can you explain what was so special about the N.26 Grand Siècle and how the unique parts equal the whole in the overall Grand Siecle concept?

The wish of my grandfather [Bernard de Nonancourt, who launched the Grand Siècle in the 1950s] was really to try to recreate the perfect wine through the blend of three exceptional vintages. So yes, it's interesting to isolate the characteristic of a single vintage, and 2008 is a very good example because of its high acidity, low pH, very good potential of aging. The N.26 did surprise me when I went from Iteration 25 to Iteration 26. In terms of expression overall, it was more aromatic and more expressive.

But beyond the intrinsic qualities of a vintage, we look for the complement it may have with the other vintages in order to really find a style and to try to recreate this perfection that nature cannot provide. The three vintages all have their own life. And sometimes throughout the evolution of an iteration, you can have some vintages that are stepping out a little bit. So that's also why we tend to age Grand Siècle for a very long time, because, you know, at the beginning they are quite powerful, those three vintages, and they need to find their balance before releasing a new iteration on the market. It's true that during the evolution of Grand Siècle, you can see sometimes one that is standing out a little bit more than the other two, it's also all the time evolving; the wine is in movement all the time.

Champagne Laurent-Perrier’s significant decision in the 1950s to emphasize the assemblage over the vintage and blend three non-vintage wines in the Grand Siècle is an early example of the house’s commitment to new practices and thinking to produce the best possible wine for consumers. But is a NV tête de cuvée difficult to communicate when others are mostly vintage?

The real approach to Champagne is that it's a blending wine. And through blending we create the style of the brand and therefore the house. But it’s true that the consumer is used to hearing that most of the prestige cuvees are vintage. However, Grand Siècle is completely different. For me, it's a niche because it's the only prestige cuvee made out of a blend of declared vintage years: three exceptional and selected vintages chosen for their complementarity. You're right that it's an added difficulty for the consumer not to know what's inside the bottle and for us to explain why it's a different prestige cuvee from the others. But it’s a good challenge. And that's also why we've chosen to put an iteration number on this prestige cuvee in order to really give more explanation and to be more transparent about it.

That leads to my next question: In 2019, you began labeling the Grand Siècle with iterations number labels on bottles that clearly identify the varieties and percentages in your blend. Why do you think this is an important practice for Laurent-Perrier and the industry in general as regards consumer education? Do you think this is an appeal for consumers whose desire has grown for ingredient and origin transparency in not only wine but also food, products and beyond?

It's true that you can really see [this desire for transparency and more information] in many different areas like food, cosmetics. Wine is no exception. We need to meet the consumer’s expectations in terms of information.

Champagne has been more and more regarded as a very good wine that has all its place at a gastronomic table or in a collector's cellar. And in parallel of that, we've seen consumers that are getting much more knowledgeable about wine. They have become real wine geeks, or at least wine lovers. And Champagne has seen an increasing interest from these people, because it's such a complicated wine compared to still wines and requires much more knowledge, much more explanation, to really understand it. So that's why it was important to respond as a region, but also as Laurent-Perrier, to explain better what's inside a bottle of Champagne and to explain the complexity behind it.

To what do you attribute this growing knowledge about and interest in Champagne in particular?

Specifically with Champagne, I have the impression that it has increased a lot since the pandemic. I think that a lot of people had Champagne in their cellar that they did not touch before [the pandemic] and they realized that it was something not only reserved for celebrations or special moments, but every day was actually a special moment to enjoy a bottle of Champagne. And they discovered it also with food. And so, step by step, I think that they recognized that Champagne was more a wine rather than just a product for celebration. And because of that, they really wanted to know more. There are obviously other things, but the pandemic was part of it.

The Laurent-Perrier Group obtained the Sustainable Viticulture in Champagne (SVC) and the High Environmental Value (HEV) certifications in February 2018 and controls waste during  the wine production and product packaging processes via recycling and minimizing consumption of water, electricity and gas. What about Laurent-Perrier’s use of new technologies in the vineyard?

Champagne has strong guidelines for everyone to reduce their carbon emission 75 percent by 2050. So all of the protagonists of Champagne have to evolve. You have some people that are going further or quicker than others, and not everyone is doing exactly the same thing in every department; some are focused on packaging, some on the vineyard work, some on the soil, etc. To do everything at the same time for any company is impossible. And when you focus on one effort, you often have smaller things to dig into the further you get into it. It's never-ending.

'It's only working together that we can do more sustainable work and be more responsible for our terroir.'

The large majority of our grape supply is coming from different winegrowers all around Champagne. Because we are sourcing our grapes from very different winegrowers we need to follow all the guidelines. In terms of new technologies, for example, we have recently been testing sustainable vineyard solutions, including a viticultural e-robot. Because it's only working together that we can do more sustainable work and be more responsible for our terroir. And if it's only one person working well, it won't help the others, because we all have our vineyards close to each other. We all share more or less the same soil. If one person is not doing well, then the others obviously will have some repercussion.

In terms of new technologies, for example we have been working with robots in the vineyard. We have done a lot of different trials and it's working very well. But also depending on the climate, we sometimes cannot use them or because of the slopes or things like that. So we still need to adapt with that. But it's a good example of a new technology in the vineyard in which we have invested and that is showing great effects.

What are the changes brought by climate change to Champagne as a region and specifically, Laurent- Perrier?

What we know is that we have more uncertainties, more irregularities than ever, and we cannot predict anything because every harvest is different. I'm going every harvest to see all our partners or most of them, and even the oldest ones, say, “I've never seen a year like that before.” So every year is a new challenge, a new harvest to understand. 2023 is a good example because it was incredible to see this volume, but also with grapes that were so huge and heavy and that we've never seen before. So…we cannot really stick to [the idea that] that we only have warm years and earlier harvest because sometimes we have later harvest, sometimes a year is not that warm.

What we try to do at Laurent-Perrier is focus on preserving the style that we want to obtain—freshness, purity and elegance—by doing everything we can do all year-long in our vineyard management and then at the harvest to reach this result. And that is also why we deeply trust in the blend because by blending we do not have a lot of differences from one vintage to the other, because that's the thing that my grandfather didn't really like in using one single vintage.

How does the Laurent-Perrier house style appeal to the modern palate?

What I've seen with climate change is that more wines are becoming too alcoholic and lack freshness, and people's tastes are turning to more and more fresh wines with less alcohol. But sometimes when it's too acidic, it can be too harsh and lacking depth or aromatic complexities, not offering enjoyment, which is the goal. Laurent-Perrier has this depth and aromatic complexity due to the long aging in our cellar. It was also a range of wines sold by my grandfather to be paired with food, and the complexity can really marry and pair with a lot of different foods. This was his philosophy since the beginning and my family, and the cellarmasters have been the gatekeepers of this style ever since. And what I've seen is the surprise of people tasting Champagne all through a meal and it pairs perfectly with all of the food. More and more people are convinced that it's a true wine that has its own place at the table.

Laurent-Perrier has been independently and family owned since its inception in 1812. In an industry that is increasingly consolidating and commercializing, why do you think this autonomy is important and what are the advantages it brings?

When my grandfather became the director in 1948, his goal was to make Laurent-Perrier grow and become a more recognized Champagne house. It has created a very unique know-how that has been maintained by the family ever since. And this independence is very vital for us because we can continue to closely maintain and develop this ongoing quest for quality. We always seek innovation, but with a vision of respecting our Champagne style and trying to reach the highest quality possible. And if we can get better every time we try to get better every time. The Grand Siècle was the first wine created by my grandfather and is really the school that inspires and drives the house excellence. Since the beginning, it has set the tone for the rest of the of the range of the other wines.

I also think being family owned conveys more warmth to the final consumer. It's closer to them. It's not just a brand name; it's also a family behind it. But though it’s our family now, it could be another one afterward. We are the gatekeeper of the style, of the value of the know-how. But then maybe it will be passed to another family. Sometimes you cannot just associate just the family with the name. It's just a period of time, but Laurent-Perrier will, I hope, endure even when we’re not here.

Finally, you travel the world representing the brand and in particular Grand Siècle. Beyond the appeal Laurent-Perrier and Champagne have to modern palates, what else can you do to appeal better to new consumers?

I think it's much more how you reach the right consumer with the right Champagne in order for them to then enter into and be seduced by the world of Champagne. In Champagne, you have a lot of diversity [in style] and sometimes when people try a Champagne, they don't like it because it's not their style. And if you have tried the wrong ones in the beginning, maybe you think that the whole category is the same, but it's not. You have very different expressions. Helping consumers discover different Champagnes with different meals, different pairings and with a large diversity of style makes it easier. Maybe start them in the Brut category, because it's a more representative and a signature of the house style of every house. It makes them taste different brands and styles, and they learn the styles they like. Once they know more or less their palate, they can just go and try different things.