Elite Traveler HRS 2025

elite traveler HOTELS, RESORTS &SPAS2025 23

was commemorated with an extravagant evening at Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill’s iconic La Fábrica, where Catalonian chef Albert Adrià, along with Niko Romito, served up a menu inspired by the tactility of the two newly unveiled vintages: Dom Pérignon Vintage 2015 and Dom Pérignon Vintage 2006 Plénitude 2. The result of patience, precision and practice, after an initial maturation of 15 years, it took an additional seven for Dom Pérignon Vintage 2006 to reach Plénitude 2. That time has allowed the initial sweetness of Vintage 2006 to be elevated into a more streamlined version of itself, a saline

“There’s always a balance between mastery and the unknown,” Chaperon ruminates. “But there is a matter of intuition, of skills and of repetition. That there is a moment where the intelligence of the body speaks and there is something more profound, mysterious, emotional, which is speaking in what youdo.” Inviting the world to understand this creative process, in July 2024, Chaperon and Dom Pérignon gathered journalists, artists, sommeliers and esteemed friends of the house to Barcelona for Révélations 2024. As the fourth iteration of Dom Pérignon’s annual rendezvous, Révélations 2024

bitterness that’s balanced by Dom Pérignon’s inherent subtlety and delicacy. It was Chaperon’s predecessor, Richard Geoffroy, who observed that vintages go through three distinct moments: “Three moments where they were showing this plentitude of deep expression. Three moments when they were different; the same wine but doing something different.” As he explains, a vintage is considered the first Plénitude, generally observed after six to 10 years; Plénitude 2 after 12 to 20 years; and the final Plénitude reached after that. “You are in a tension between the maturity you feel and the wine’s maturity; with that toastiness, the creaminess, the umami, but still so precise or fresh,” is how Chaperon describes it. “It’s a moment when the wine is singing higher, with more intensity, like the peak of energy and vibrancy which you have observed in [Dom Pérignon Vintage] 2006 Plénitude 2.” From the very premise of Révélations 2024, down to the way Chaperon describes each and every glass of Dom Pérignon esteemed vintages, you would expect the chef de cave to have grown up surrounded by artists or philosophers. Instead, Chaperon comes from an agricultural family, with his grandmother running the family vineyard in Bordeaux. “My family was selling and making wine from the 15th century, so really my DNA is from thewine.” Perhaps it’s no surprise that Chaperon taps into this artistic affiliation to describe the maison’s latest vintage release, Dom Pérignon Vintage 2015. There are the expected, traditional tasting notes — “flesh of fresh peach and nectarine,” which then “envelop into the bitter notes of citrus and gentian” — but Chaperon also brings in visual and abstract reference points: “I was thinking back to the photos of [Hiroshi] Sugimoto, the Japanese photographer, and when I drank and I was preparing to send 2015 out, I was describing an unwavering presence, a presence with authority but without aggressivity. With Sugimoto’s photography, black and white photos of the horizon of the sea […] there was a density and there’s an intensity, but everything is appeasing. 2015 is about that; it’s present, it’s strong, but appeasing.” Reaching this point of winemaking’s artistic infraction has been one of Chaperon’s goals at Dom Pérignon: “It’s one of my deep dreams to really help fine wine stay at this place, as it has always been, in the core of human beings since the start of civilization,” he muses. “I’m not here to keep Dom Pérignon as it is, as it was, as it’s not, but I’m going to develop in its style, of the tradition, of the ‘Trace’. Because that ‘Trace’ is alive, but that means the embodiment is important to bring your own feelings and emotion.” domperignon.com