A cascade of golden liquid pours from the green bottle, rushing downwards and bubbling against the thin glass. The pale drink reflects the fading afternoon light as it’s raised high into the air in a toast— the picture of class, a vision of tactility. 

On Thursday July 18, an intimate group of VIPs—actors, chefs, influencers, and critics—including Naomi Watts, Camila Morrone, Evan Mock, Rachel Zoe, Cole Bennett, Pierce Abernathy, Kilo Kish, and Quinn Mora attended an exclusive Dom Pérignon event, hosted at a private estate in the Hamptons. The catalyst? To unveil the brand’s Vintage 2015 and Vintage 2006 Plénitude 2 champagnes. Tasting the two time capsules side by side, each a bottling of the trials and joys and heat and rains of their respective years, the guests got a small peek at the Dom Pérignon design. 

But what exactly does Dom Pérignon taste like? Unanswerable. Despite its foundational position in the world of wine, its function as a metonym for champagne itself, Dom Pérignon isn’t a stable entity. It’s a shifting cloud of singular champagnes united more by ineffables like artistic philosophy and a dedication to quality than anything as trite as “product consistency.” It’s a perpetually unfinished pointillist painting composed of sparkling impressions carefully placed year after year with each vintage.

Adorned in gowns and suits fit for the red carpet, the guests rode an elegant yacht to the 21-acre estate where they first experienced Dom Pérignon’s signature solo tasting: the bubbling drink against the tongue echoed through a sensory sound bath. Following the luxurious amuse bouche which some savored in solitude, others on the lawn large enough to land an air force, the guests were provided with an unforgettable gastronomic experience created by legendary Argentine chef, Francis Mallmann who drew inspiration from the iconic vintage champagnes to create a menu that embraced the senses: salt-crusted salmon and whole lambs dosed in a zesty gremolata sauce among other lavish dishes.

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To cap off the soirée, a musical performance was held on a floating platform, suspended above the water with a front-row seat to the stunning landscape. An intimate toast led by Dom Pérignon's cellarmaster, Vincent Chaperon, took place beside a roaring fire pit, where guests raised their gold-filled glasses to celebrate Dom Pérignon's creations and the extravagant gastronomical experience. 

For those of you reading with a rumbling stomach and a craving for fine dining, the Dom Pérignon event will be open to the public on July 19, July 20, and July 21. Prospective guests may reserve a spot on this immersive journey by submitting an inquiry. Explorations of Tactility will be available in New York City, Chicago, and Washington D.C., where chefs will interpret the vintages to craft dishes that complement the luxury champagne. 

Below, FLAUNT waxed philosophical with Chef de Cave Vincent Chaperon on the nature of wine and winemaking, tacility, memory, time, culture, nature, and more. He knows each vintage like you might know all the houses you’ve ever visited. Flavor is just one facet. When he describes them, he doesn’t cite the usual referents — apple, leather, stone fruit. He’s more inclined to think in terms of tactility, emotion, or even architectural structure. And if you’ve tasted it, you know exactly what he means. ‍

In the course of bringing to life this pair of vintages at Dom Pérignon, is there anything you learned about yourself as a winemaker or as a person? Are there any evolutions in your own approach that occurred during this release?

I would say that I’m learning, we are learning, permanently. It is a continuous process of learning, which is good. I think it comes from the fact that we are working with nature and nature is super complex and super mysterious. I’m always saying that my wine surprises me, even if I’ve been working on it for ten years, twenty years. You know them perfectly. You have been creating them, accompanying them during the maturation, but they are still surprising you. 

‍In your written remarks on the Dom Pérignon Plénitude 2 2006, you describe how that vintage has been elevated to a new summative expression or this idea of a second line for the voltage. How do you relate this idea of ripple effects with champagne making as an experience? Would you agree that this particular vintage possesses a reverberation sensationally or from a sensory perspective? 

Yeah, it’s quite a philosophical question. It’s something that happens to our wine. I think that it's happening in life, in nature, a little bit everywhere. Wine is a permanent cycle of life. As an engineer of agronomy— studying plants, trees, and roles of nature— when you look at the cycle of nature, the flowers, they are growing, then opening and dying, and then redoing it again every year. 

With our wines, we do plenty too. It's a little bit like wine, a flower which is opening. Plénitude is a flower which is opening. That means that everything, from the beginning when we blend, is inside like a flower. A flower, which is closed, you have all the components, all the layers, all the complexity and the mystery of life in it. Time is the only way for things in general to blossom and to open. With Plénitude 2, it’s that moment where our wines are starting to reveal— to blossom and to reveal all the components and the layers it has inside. It's not new components, it's just a revelation. It's just the wine unfurling. I don’t know if you know but there is a Plénitude 3 after 30 years. It’s the moment where the wine is completely showing. 

‍Do you like that moment in particular?

I like that moment because I think it is the most emotional. Because when you have energy, it can catch the attention of people. 

For the 2006 Plénitude 2, you describe this tension between bliss and generosity. The champagne could have a character of the moments in which we experience it. Would you like to see champagne, in that sense of bliss and generosity, culturally increase its presence?

First of all, tension is a value which is true to Dom Pérignon. We strongly believe Dom Pérignon is about tension. Life is about tension. It's about contrast, it's about harmony built through contrasting tension. If you look at Dom Pérignon's creative process, we play on contrast, we play on tension.

‍Why were the Hamptons the right place for this release? Was there any particular reason that you were drawn to the Hamptons for this debut?

I think  the idea was because of the collaboration we had. It was the idea of the theme, tactility, and then the collaboration with Francis. We needed to do something outside with the light, the water, the moon, the sun, and the earth, in a stable circle around the fire all together to come back to a very primitive sensation.

‍That's interesting. Francis Mallmann is obviously in touch with the essentials of cooking in a way that releases that kind of primitive sense of our humanity. With Francis's food, did you feel the vintages had that character as well?

We are surrounded by nature, but we never pay attention to the complexity of every single element of it. I've been studying for around two years: biology, physiology, and animals. I was amazed by what I learned about nature, about every single thing. The wine is a way to attract our attention because with a brand like Dom Pérignon, there is a sense of fame. There is a power of attraction, of desirability. We have the chance to have this power and through this power we can invite people like we did yesterday to reconnect, or to dive a little bit into it. It's simple and complex like Francis’ cuisine. It’s very easy to drink, very simple to drink, but it's super complex because as soon as you start to enter into it, there is no end. We can go and go and go and go. 

Do you think the 2006 and the 2015 have  elements that feel very classically Dom Pérignon, and then some elements that feel kind of brand new? 

They are both permanently evolving. It’s difficult to catch Dom Pérignon because it’s the sum of all the vintages and it's moving, like a cloud. It’s moving through every vintage but it's also moving on a long-term curve because the climate is changing and people are changing. The context is changing, and we always want to push the boundaries of the quality of excellence. Dom Pérignon is in movement, and so if you look at 15 and 6, it is a Dom Pérignon because it has harmony. There is a balance. It's easy to drink. There is a kind of minerality with a toastiness, with an intensity and a tactile sensation. All of these concepts are operating, coming from a very warm year, which is quite new in Champagne. You know, 50 years ago or even 300 years ago, it was what we call an ice era. It was a moment of cold in France.  

‍That used to be the biggest problem. 

Yes, exactly. 40 years ago or 25 years ago when I arrived, the climate was much harsher in terms of cold rain, and so it has been changing. Every year we try to push the boundaries of intensity and the boundaries are of more substance because it’s our direction, we want more substance in our wine. No matter our ambitions, we want to transmit the depth of the matter of nature. Pushing that and having the evolutional climate, 15 is a new era. You feel it. People have been following Dom Pérignon for years. It's saying something new about Dom Pérignon. So is it modernity? I don't like this term because modernity, once you pronounce it, it's finished. There is something new, which is happening with 15. More generosity, more fruitiness than what used to be in Dom Pérignon, more softness, more security, more generality on the one end as well as more structure, more precision with the structure, the phenology. 

‍You have a very spatial understanding of the wines. That seems rare to me. 

When I drink wine, I see figures, I see space, I see lines. There is a direct connection between you and what you feel in your brain. Your brain is interpreting all your translations, and it creates images. This is from the beginning of human beings. It's about elevation. It's about luxury. Luxury is imaginary. It is a capacity of fields like jewelry, like wine. They start to create the imaginary.

When you think about the future of Dom Pérignon, do you see the challenges that you're presented with as a winemaker from the perspective of climate change? Do you see them as exciting challenges? Do you see them as threats? Do you look to the future with a lot of excitement?

I'm a man of passion and mission. I feel a mission to share with the world what we are living because we are grounded. We are rooted every day in the vineyard, facing the evolution of time. Changing is connection. We have the chance almost every year to elevate it to the table of the people who are leading the world. Usually the people who drink and buy Dom Pérignon are very successful, so this is a fantastic opportunity to transmit what we are living on one side—day to day facing the climate and its evolution—to the table during communion and sharing and pleasure and happiness. And there is no position. Life is about happiness. Life is about constraint, evolution, nature, challenges, etc. We need not to separate those. One of the big problems to avoid is the separation. We need to face it. That's what we are doing. Voila, I don't know if we can solve it. I'm faithful that human beings can find a solution, but we need to be conscious of it. We need to accompany it. And we need to change the way we've been living for the past fifty or sixty years because honestly, it's been less than 100 years that we have been changing the trajectory.

‍I love that concept. As the winemaker, that seems almost like an enjoyable challenge in certain ways even if it is difficult— that idea that it adds a new dimension to your process.

Dom Pérignon is luxury, and Dom Pérignon is nature. It’s really to share with the world that the new shape of luxury is nature, is coming back to this sense of the definition of nature, the sense of the definition of luxury. It's what allows you to elevate yourself. What allows you to have dreams. We need to understand that we are nature. We need nature. So, not living far from that, not hiding our eyes from that. We have to come back to it and do everything we can.