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Guy Woodward: LVMH and the cult of personality

No one does luxe quite like LVMH, and the tone was clear from the outset – this was the first press trip I’ve attended that came with its own app.

After an opening-night rooftop soirée, much of the focal day was spent at the Palau Martorell, where DP had installed a week-long art and photography exhibition entitled ‘Trace’. The theme took shape when the 2023 harvest – documented by photographer Alexandre Gerganger – proved a dud. As a result, chef de cave Vincent Chaperon decided to use the footage to leave a “trace” that “bore witness to a year when a vintage was not declared”. It was, he said, about conveying that “the presence is in the absence”. Or, as he added in more vivid fashion, “like the warmth left on a seat from the previous occupant”.

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From there, with military precision and plenty of business for the Catalonia branch of Addison Lee, there followed a long lunch (obvs) and the formal tasting, before the evening gala. Here we tasted again, at individual pods, wearing headphones, through which was streamed Erik Satie’s diaphanous Gymnopédie no1, before we were serenaded by pianist Bertrand Chamayou playing avant-garde American composer John Cage (including an interpretation of his most famous work, 4’33”, which comprises four minutes and thirty-three seconds of pure silence). Dinner, by chefs Albert Adrià and Niko Romito, was positively nourishing in comparison.

Chaperon is a disciple of the gnomic Richard Geoffroy, and sure enough, there was lots of talk of how acidity is “horizontal”, whereas weight and texture is “vertical”; of “a perpetual quest for harmony as a source of emotion”; and of the search for “truth in the palate”. It’s easy to scoff at all this. But I was particularly struck by one thing Chaperon said: “I love the winemaking process, but – and I say this with a lot of humility – I am more of an artistic director than a winemaker.”

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An artist’s vision

While the event could have been conceived for any type of high-end product – fashion, jewellery, beauty – it had Chaperon’s fingerprints all over it. He started planning the exhibition a year ago – “like a vintage” – with “everything coming from me – the intention, strength and intensity”. Similarly for the evening, he chose the chefs, pianist, venue, directing affairs like a circus master. The final course (entitled “not a dessert”) was a co-creation between him and Adrià. “Everything is my vision,” he reiterated.

It is the same, he says, with the Champagne. A panel of 18 taste the base wines, with four of them then working on the blend. “They give me complementary information, nourishing me, like an artist. That’s good for consistency and analysis, but not for creativity. Ultimately, it’s my creative vision.”

If you’re finding it hard to square such a sentiment with Chaperon’s expression of humility, believe me, having been exposed to the fashion world when working at Harrods, I can assure you that Chaperon has nothing on the creative directors of fellow LVMH brands Dior, Fendi et al. In this illusory world, the brand is an image of its creative director. There are very few such equivalents in the wine world.

Instead we are told, ad infinitum, that wine is made in the vineyard, not the winery. But that’s not quite true. For just as a well-managed football team can better the sum of its parts, so some vineyards outperform their rank, purely on account of the brilliance of their winemaker. Why else pay handsomely
for a consultant such as Michel Rolland, after all? Yet the wine world prefers not to talk about such talent. Rolland was ultimately pilloried and few of his clients now boast of his input.

There are a handful of brands where the winemaker takes centre stage. Chaperon is one, as Geoffroy was before him. Peter Gago at Penfolds is another. Without boasting the same showmanship, other vignerons have been equally integral. It’s hard to imagine the remote Ridge being so prominent on the California wine map without Paul Draper. Or Château Musar achieving international fame without Serge Hochar. Or Swartland being so reputed a region without the genius of Eben Sadie.

Champagne, less dependent on individual sites, relies on the skill of the winemaker more than anywhere. Yet most chefs de caves remain in the background. Not every winemaker is an extrovert, of course, but the wine world as a whole seems wary of the cult of personality.
Is it missing a trick? Because like it or loathe it, at the top end, a wine’s image is about flair, theatre and personality. As LVMH knows all too well…     

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