When Bruno Paillard founded his house in 1981, he had no vineyards, only a conviction that champagne should be understood as wine, and to fund it he sold his collector’s Mark II Jaguar. “I started without any vines, but with the culture of great ones,” he says. He championed low dosage long before it became fashionable, and from 1983 printed the disgorgement date on every bottle. “If we agree that this wine is alive, then disgorgement is an operation on a living thing.”
What interested me even more is how art has been woven into the fabric of the house from the very start. Each vintage of his Assemblage carries an original artwork on its label, inspired by a single word chosen at the final tasting of that year’s wine. For the 2012 vintage the word was sillon, or furrow, and Claude Viallat, co-founder of Supports/Surfaces, answered it with a delicate abstraction of pinks, purples and greens. Paillard is a collector too, and finds in Serge Poliakoff’s paintings the same balance he looks for in a blend: “making sometimes fighting colours work together as a harmonious piece: for me, that is a great champagne.” The gallery at the visitor centre on the outskirts of Reims is testament to his investment in art and ideas.
Paillard also has a fondness for classic motorcars. When we interviewed him for our forthcoming book, The Life Champagne, he arrived at our lunch at Les Crayères in a Maserati Ghibli, the rare Giugiaro-designed coupé he calls his treasure. Later we met the rest of the family, who share his passion: their daily drivers are two Citroën DS convertibles from the late 1960s, Flaminio Bertoni’s sculptural machines.
Read the full interview on Spinach Challengers
Claude Viallat and Bruno Paillard posing with artwork for the 2012 vintage, ©Bruno Paillard