Diving into the secret vault of Ruinart

Show white paw. A sine qua non condition for being invited to descend the few steps carved into the Soissons stone to “the vintage cellar”. Because in this secret vault set up in the basement of the new Nicolas Ruinart pavilion designed by architect Sou Fujimoto “all in transparency and curves”exclaims the cellar master of the Ruinart house, Frédéric Panaïotis, only connoisseurs and collectors are invited to enter. Out of sight, all the vintages – except three – of Dom Ruinart since its creation are gathered here, 1959 for the blanc de Blancs, 1966 for the Dom Ruinart rosé. Bottles, for the most part, not for sale. But which, for certain vintages – from 1985 – and especially 1988, can be enjoyed on site. And this in optimal conditions.

“A unique and exclusive experience but under artificial lighting of an orange color to preserve the wines from the alteration of time and cool temperature, warns the cellar manager. When, three years ago, the oldest house in Champagne, founded in 1729, considered building a new pavilion for the celebration of its tercentenary, Frédéric Panaïotis began to think.

A bookstore with all the old vintages

“In the past, there has unfortunately been no desire for conservation on the part of Ruinart. But I had a few bottles of Dom Ruinart in the cellar which had been put aside by my predecessors. In particular some 2 000 bottles and 500 magnums which were used for the first “cork printing” tests in 1998. Incredible bottles. Exceptional freshness. We tasted them, we kept a little for posterity but I said to myself that there was perhaps also a way to share it with enthusiasts, amateurs who would like to discover this aspect of aging before the “capsule crown” became the norm from the 1960s. I told myself that we had to build a library with all the old vintages because we had almost all lost them. Before the Second World War, we had almost nothing, the same for the years 1970-1980. »

Then began a vast undertaking to recollect the missing vintages. So for the 1959, found in New York via Los Angeles. But the idea is not just to look to the past. Because the 1998 tests convinced Frédéric Panaïotis that the cork print is “the right path to achieve greater complexity, particularly for chardonnay ». Since 2010, the cellar master has restarted this way of doing things.

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It is therefore also these Dom Ruinart Réserve bottles put on the market from 2012 which are offered. As well as a few magnums of Ruinart Blanc de vins brut vintages with late disgorging dating from before the bottle change in 2004. These four vintages (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007) “kept first on the axis, therefore horizontally, then on the tip to stir the deposit in contact with the capsule in order to block their evolution”, were disgorged last February. The result is magnificent. Proof, if ever there was one, of Ruinart's art in reinterpreting time.