For this 25th episode of the Wine Makers Show, Wine Makers Show sits down with Frédéric Zeimett, the general manager of Leclerc Briant champagnes. After a day spent in his company, I can tell you there’s a lot going on at Leclerc Briant. We also got to taste the house’s champagne and, in a word: we had a feast. Enjoy the listen!
Can you start by introducing yourself?
Since I’m over 60, this is going to take us back a while. In a few words, almost by accident or by chance, I dedicated my professional life to wines and spirits. I got drunk for the first time at 8 years old: I finished off the dregs of Port glasses at my parents’ place. I kept the good memory and not the bad one, so maybe I was meant to dedicate my professional life to this world.
What happened between the moment you were finishing off glasses at your parents’ place and the moment you started your career in champagne?
I was pretty much groomed to become a chartered accountant: business school, tax, law. I then joined an Anglo-Saxon audit firm in Paris. I came across an ad: Moët et Chandon was looking for an auditor to strengthen its teams. I told myself it was for me. I wanted to join the region where I was born. So I married wine and arrived at Moët et Chandon in 1983. When I told my mum I was joining Moët et Chandon, she said to me: “but is Moët et Chandon really a serious house?”. The wheel has turned a long way since, because it’s an extremely serious house and a tremendous training ground. I learned a great deal over nearly 30 years. I went in as an internal auditor, then I took over the legal department. Next I joined Moët Hennessy in Paris and then in Germany as the on-site director. I came back in 2000 to become group CFO of Moët et Chandon. Finally, I was appointed director of upstream strategy, which covers the whole mergers and acquisitions side. I then left the group to take over as general manager of Vranken Pommery Monopole in Reims.
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If there are two or three lessons you take away from those 30 years, what would they be?
It’s hard, because I learned a lot, especially from a person I consider my spiritual father in business: Yves Bénard. He was one of the iconic presidents of Moët et Chandon. He taught me a great deal, especially about the quality of listening and the art of synthesis, and he opened the doors of this magical world of wine for me. I recommend wine as a field of work to everyone: it’s so magical. But I’m not the one who’s going to lecture you about that.
Is that also when you discovered wine?
No, it wasn’t at Moët et Chandon that I discovered wine. In a champagne house there’s a lot of talk about the downstream side; that is, distribution and bringing the wine to market. There’s fairly little talk about the wine itself. I learned that more later, when I had the chance to take over as general manager of Chapoutier. That’s when I discovered wine in its many-sided dimension, its materials and its substance. I discovered wine as a product at Chapoutier rather than in champagne.
How did your arrival at Chapoutier go, after 32 years in champagne?
I feel a bit like an outsider, which is actually what Michel nicknamed me: “you, the foreigner, you, the man from Champagne”, with both a bit of humour and a bit of envy, because champagne remains mythical. I learned a lot from being around Michel every day. It was an intense period and I learned a great deal, discovered so much about the diversity of wines. When I arrived, I remember this line from Michel: “Frédéric, you’ll do everything I don’t feel like doing”. I traveled a lot abroad on Michel’s behalf to find good opportunities around Rhône grape varieties. Michel is one of the world’s leading references in organic and biodynamic farming. I come from a very traditional world. There was very little talk of organic in champagne. I arrived in a fairly esoteric and surprising universe. The first time I found myself with a copper sprayer on my back at 7 in the morning, spraying young plants with what I considered to be water, I wondered what I was doing. Through reading and through discussions with Michel, I realized there was something different about him. I started reading and tasting. You suddenly open your eyes and your senses and you appreciate wine differently. You appreciate wine on another level.
What’s the thing that surprised you the most?
It’s really that: spraying young plants with what I considered to be water. What’s also surprising is seeing the result. It’s realizing that everything you can do differently in making a wine is very often fantastic. At his place, in his team and in the world that revolves around Chapoutier, I discovered a world of passionate, convinced people. Once you’re vaccinated with organic and biodynamics, you never come out of it and you’re all the better for it.
Is that something you bring here to Leclerc Briant?
It came before me, because Leclerc Briant is a house that is one of the pioneers of organic and biodynamic farming in champagne, since it goes back to the 1960s. That said, I’m carrying on and keeping this organic and biodynamic side alive.
When you joined Chapoutier, did you imagine ever coming back to champagne one day?
I’ve never made a career plan, so it wasn’t when I arrived at Chapoutier that I was going to start. At the time I’d just had a baby with my wife, who stayed in Champagne, so I wasn’t cut out to stay at Chapoutier.
Let’s move on to Leclerc Briant. Can you tell us the history of the house?
It’s a very old house that began as a wine estate in 1872. Lucien Leclerc, in Cumières, created his wine estate. He was friends with Eugène Mercier. As the story goes, he was one of the first to make his own bottles and so to break free from the traditional model of selling to the trade. That touch of singularity went on to mark the history of Leclerc Briant down the generations. There are two important figures among the Leclercs. Bertrand Leclerc ran the house from the 1950s to the 1980s. He brought interesting things. His business was doing well, so he moved from Cumières to Épernay. He married Jacqueline Briant and added his wife’s name to his own. He also changed his status under champagne regulations to become a négociant. That meant that, beyond his own grapes, he allowed himself to buy grapes to increase his production. He was one of the first to go organic in champagne, not out of conviction, nor out of intuition, nor out of marketing concerns. He suffered from a thyroid condition, and every time he came back from treating his vines, his thyroid suffering got worse. So he quickly made the connection between products of petrochemical origin and his ailments. He therefore stopped using them and went back to what his father and grandfather used to do. He was heavily criticised at the time, because those products were the fashion of the post-war years: France had to be rebuilt after the war. His difference stuck out and left him with the image of a pariah of champagne, because he was different from the others. He held firm and passed the baton to his son: Pascal Leclerc. He took the certification process all the way. !Champagne Leclerc Briant Pascal Leclerc died in 2010 and the house ended up being sold. The wine estate was sold to the champagne trade. I had the chance to buy what wasn’t vines: the buildings, 100,000 bottles, the remains of a distribution network and the brand. We also bought half a hectare of vines that adjoins the house and is called la Croisette: a very beautiful Chardonnay plot in Épernay. It took a lot of courage, energy and a bit of money to get this momentum going again. But it had to be done, because Leclerc Briant was a visionary house in its time that was perhaps wrong to be right too soon. Today we no longer have those same problems of acceptance. We’ve spared no effort since 2012.
What state did you find Leclerc Briant in when you arrived?
It was practically a blank page. In 2013, I held a first press lunch with Dessauve and I brought my samples. The lunch went well and I explained to Dessauve that I was starting again from zero. Thierry said to me “you’re not starting again from zero, you’re starting again from less than zero”. That’s when I told myself it was going to be hard. But with a lot of effort, energy and ideas, I think we managed to bring Leclerc Briant back to the surface.
How did your meeting with Marc and Denise, Leclerc Briant’s two investors, come about?
Marc and Denise had been looking to invest in champagne for a long time. During 2012, they had something on the table and their business lawyer is one of my friends. The deal they were on had an extension in the Loire. They were wondering whether it was worth also buying that offshoot in the Loire. I was in Saumur, so my friend suggested to Marc and Denise that they meet me to talk through their investments. So I saw Marc and Denise arrive and we spent the day together. A week later, Marc called me back and said “Loire bubbles aren’t of interest to us, but you are. We’d like you to join us at Leclerc Briant”. That’s how I arrived at Leclerc Briant, which will surely be the last challenge of my career, and I’m also a shareholder in the house. We have a relationship of trust and I have a call with them once a month, and we see each other twice a year to take stock. They’ve never said no, though they can say “interesting”. When we wanted to part with the Épernay buildings to set up a more modern winery outside Épernay, they’d said “interesting”. That was their way of saying “think twice”. In the end, we kept the historic Épernay buildings, which we completely renovated. Today we have something magnificent.
Marc and Denise have also invested elsewhere. Can you tell us about it?
We’re seeing the emergence of a group whose value is “the French art of living”. Their first investment is Leclerc Briant. When we started working together, they told me that if I found a hotel nearby, they’d buy it. In 2014, I found the opportunity to buy the Royal Champagne. At the time it belonged to Moët et Chandon, and as CFO I sold it in 2001 to an Italian group. I have the photo of the handover of the keys at the time. If someone had told me that in 2015 I’d be buying the establishment back from the same person, I wouldn’t have believed it. So I have the same photo but the other way round in 2015. They bought the hotel and turned it into a fantastic five-star establishment with 48 rooms, a Michelin-starred restaurant and a bistronomy restaurant. It’s surely the best view you can have in champagne. Then we’d decided we needed a shop. If we open a shop, it had to be on the avenue de Champagne or in Reims. If it’s in Reims, it has to be in front of the Cathedral. In 2015, I had to find a shop in Reims or in Épernay. In 2015, my family notary told me he was going to sell his family home in Épernay. I gave Marc and Denise a call, I dropped by to take a few photos, and the next day I had my answer: “ok, let’s go”. It happened in one night. The idea was to make a shop and not to have 450 square metres of house. So we made the shop. Denise, who is a hospitality specialist, said to me “make a guesthouse”. We made five guest rooms above and behind the shop. So we have this very beautiful guesthouse on the avenue de Champagne. We freshened it up, but we absolutely respected what we found. !27 bis Leclerc Briant What’s a shop for and why did we want one in this spot? First, when you open a shop on the avenue de Champagne, you buy yourself some history. For a house starting up again like ours, that’s wonderful. Second, it’s business: the prices offered in the shop are market prices: we’re not going to undersell our champagne. So we have the producer’s margin and the distributor’s margin. But above all: it’s a superb laboratory. We get direct feedback from the consumer, which is brilliant. In our trade, we very rarely see a consumer. Every day I have end consumers who come in and give me exceptional feedback. When a Belgian visitor says to me, “why do you serve your champagne in white Burgundy wine glasses and not in flutes?”, we bring it to him in a flute and offer him the same wine but in a white Burgundy wine glass so he can compare. When a person tells us “but your champagne is warm”, we, who promote drinking our champagne at 12°C, suggest they compare. We can also test new products. We have a cuvée that spends a year under the sea: we tested it in the shop and eight days later we were going full speed ahead. The shop is business, image, and a laboratory if you’re willing to use it.
Can you say a word about the Leclerc Briant range?
It’s a fairly complete range with 12 or 13 different cuvées. We can keep things simple. I have what I consider the must-haves of a classic range at a good négociant: a brut, a brut ++, a blended rosé and a vintage. That’s what every good house should have. As we don’t do things like everyone else, we added a saignée rosé and we also have a vintage demi-sec. I believe we’re the only operator in champagne to offer a vintage demi-sec. We then have a single-plot range. It’s a concept Pascal Leclerc had imagined. People often say wine is a blended wine: a blend of grape varieties (chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot meunier), a blend of villages (the crus) and a blend of years. Pascal Leclerc does things the other way round, with a single grape variety, single village and single year. He was one of the very first to make this type of champagne. So we carry on making single-plot wines. Finally, we have a little family we call the specialities, with a pure meunier. I think we’re the only house to make a pure meunier, to show that there aren’t two noble grape varieties but really three, as long as you choose your terroir well and work it well. We want to rehabilitate meunier in champagne and we must be the only négociant doing so. We have a grand blanc, which is a pure chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs, vinified without sulphur. We don’t slap a big “sulphite-free” label on it. Lastly, Abysse is a cuvée designed and made for ageing under the sea. You can’t make champagne outside of champagne. So it’s the finished bottle that ages at the bottom of the sea. We send the bottles finished and corked. They spend two years in the cellar and three years underwater. In the early years we changed the cork. A lot of consumers told us they wanted the original cork. We just attach a label to the wire cage to explain the approach. It works very, very well.
You also do other experiments. Can you tell us about them?
Hervé Jestin handles the making of our wines. He has an approach all his own. People often say he’s the man who whispers to the barrels. He has an almost physical relationship with wine and, as strange as it may sound, the wine listens to him. Often he doesn’t want to be disturbed. We try a lot of things and open a lot of doors. Champagne could wither from its inertia. For the past 15 to 20 years, there have been young winemakers shaking things up. We tell ourselves we have to add our own stone to the building. If we want to make Leclerc Briant stand out, then let’s be singular and original, as the house has been. We try things, particularly with containers. The idea is to check whether a given material brings something to the wine and charges it with energy. You mentioned the gold barrel, which we nickname Goldorak among ourselves. Goldorak adds an extra charge of energy to the chardonnay. It pulls the chardonnay towards the sun like never before, and we prove it with blind tastings. La Croisette 2016 will be released with part of its blend coming from Goldorak. We’ve given Goldorak a little sister with a pure titanium barrel. We can sense it’s going to work perfectly with pinot noir. We hope the titanium will root the pinot noir towards the magma and charge it with a fundamental energy. We also have mouth-blown glass globes that hold 225 litres. It’s very interesting because you can see how alcoholic fermentation unfolds. Hervé is certain that the energy contained in these wines is fantastic and out of the ordinary.
How have sales evolved at Leclerc Briant since you arrived?
What’s certain is that none of the clients I found when I arrived is still a client today. The network I found on arrival wanted cheap organic. We want expensive organic. Today we’re present in 35 export markets, with the United States as our top market, then Japan and then the nearby countries. !Leclerc Briant Champagne barrel cellar In France we sell part of it directly and through sales agents. We’re in the Repères de Bacchus guide, for example, so there are a few addresses where you can find our champagne.
Have you noticed a change in customers’ consumption habits since you arrived?
Champagne is 300 million bottles. Around 100 million of them are the big brands that will keep working everywhere, and I come from that world. You then have 150 million bottles you could consider commodities, between 10 and 15 euros. You then have 50 million bottles that are small niche houses doing very interesting things and selling very well. I think these worlds are going to become more and more polarised.
What does your day-to-day look like today?
My day-to-day is made up of the anxiety of knowing “what can I do that lifts me higher?”. I’d love for everyone to ask themselves the same question and to know what we’re doing to lift this house higher. That’s my driving force. You must never forget the common cause and must respect the codes of champagne. I’d really love that, when I pass the baton to the next person, I’ll be able to look back knowing we did something good.
Is there a question you’d have liked me to ask you?
Yes, “what is biodynamics to you?”. Biodynamics has no precise definition and it’s specific to each winemaker. You have the one who relies solely on certification. You have the one who comes back from a training course with their head still in a fog, and you don’t understand a thing. When people ask me the question, I answer with a little story. About fifteen years ago, I did a TV show with Yves Coppens. Afterwards there was a small cocktail reception and I exchanged a few words with him. I said to him “in your opinion, was caveman more or less happy than we are today?”. He gave me an interesting answer: 21st-century man is in search of ever more comfort, and by default we’re unhappy because we want more comfort than our neighbour. Conversely, caveman just wanted to live in harmony with nature. He was aware that 95% of things were beyond him and was in perfect symbiosis with nature. For me, you can transpose that to the world of wine. You have to rediscover harmony with nature. That, to me, is biodynamics. Nature is so much stronger than man: let’s listen to it, respect it and try to channel its energy.
Do you have a recent favourite tasting?
At the Royal Champagne, I tasted Les Hautées in its 2017 vintage. It’s an Auxey-Duresses of incredible minerality, tension and subtlety. It’s truly superb.
Do you have a wine book to recommend to me?
Yes, it’s a fascinating book that explains very well why there is energy in wine and traces the history of wine. Bruno Quenioux has produced a little book called “La vie mystérieuse du vin”. It picks apart what I love about wine and it’s absolutely fascinating.
Do you have someone to recommend for my next interviews?
I have one, a person who is very deserving both as a man and as a winemaker. His name is Jean Yves Chaperon. He splits his time between Paris and the Coteaux du Larzac. He makes a great-value Larzac: les Chemins de Carabote. He really deserves a visit.
