The favorite champagnes of Eric Beaumard, sommelier and director of Le Cinq, the three-star restaurant at the Four Seasons George-V
Go to Five. Between two services. The tables are set for dinner. Immaculate tablecloths, silverware, glassware, natural light flooding in through the large bay windows overlooking the patio, a few mauve orchid heads in their little transparent glass balloons are placed here and there to recall the color code of the moment at George-V. A finely tuned ballet on the carpet that dampens noise, sommeliers and heads of row twirl around before the 5:45 p.m. briefing. On the right in the corner, at the round table near the marble column at the back of the restaurant, Éric Beaumard has taken off his jacket to work more comfortably on his wine list, his shoulder and right arm wrapped in a vast square of camel cashmere .
Éric Beaumard is the key figure in Le Cinq. He is its general manager and head sommelier. Beaumard, the essential. Beaumard, the “paraoenolo”, laughs the man with the infectious burst of laughter who compares himself to Paralympic athletes for the frenzy of competition that carried him for fifteen years. Before being called by the management of the George-V to reconstitute the cellar in anticipation of the reopening of the palace in 1999 following the two years of closure for works. Vice-best sommelier in the world, the Breton native who today watches over the 50,000 exceptional cols of the George-V began his career as a clerk before a motorcycle accident deprived him of the use of his right arm. His convalescence completed, he joined the Maisons de Bricourt, in Cancale.
Recovery is difficult. "I was a cook, I lost an arm, how did I do it?" Why not refocus on wine? friendly suggestion Olivier Roellinger. Éric Beaumard takes his friend at his word. Walk after walk, he crosses all the stages, transforming himself into a beast in competition. “I liked that, the competition. It helped me anyway. When you have a disability, how do you cope? I had to have something to sell myself. From 1985 to 2000, I made fifteen years of contest until the world. It stimulates."
Best young sommelier in France (1987), best sommelier in Europe (1994), sommelier of the year (2003), vice-world champion (1998), Michelin sommelier award (2020), etc. Many of these events are sponsored by Ruinart. "It's to tell you, I'm stung!" laughs Éric Beaumard when we talk to him about champagne. At George-V, 25,000 bottles are sold each year out of a total of 65,000 bottles of wine. Great houses or cuvées of winegrowers, Éric Beaumard celebrates them as a "free man". That is to say when he is “in tune with them”, he has gone to meet the men and women behind the wine.
As he did again in August in the Champagne vineyards with his son, sommelier at Clarette, a wine bar launched in London by the heiress of Château Margaux, Alexandra Petit-Mentzelopoulos, or when he married her daughter. “I had Olivier Collin in magnums, Jacques Diebolt, Fleurs de Passion, also in magnums, and Pol Roger's brut. It was great ! Sixty bottles. It's all gone. When it's good, it doesn't take long. So let's not lose any, let's walk in champagne with this scholar of the bubble.
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The offer in terms of champagne has evolved considerably in recent years. Tell us. Concretely, when I started in the mid-1980s, the discourse was 100% dedicated to the big houses. We were bathed in the promotions of brands, great vintages… That's it, that's all. I am a child of Ruinart, I participated in all Ruinart competitions. Then, twenty-five-thirty years ago, boys started to move the lines. They talked about terroirs, municipalities, offered different champagnes, with a real taste identity more in tune with the evolution of consumers looking for cuvées with less sugar. Suddenly, it all became much richer. Who is the initiator of this movement? The first is Anselme Selosse. He owns his own vineyard, he does his own work in the vineyard, his grapes come from his terroir. It's still a lot! Anselme comes from a family of winegrowers, worked in sustainable agriculture. Of course, he was a missionary. It is easier to work 4 hectares of vines than 200. Often the great wines are wines for gardeners. It is still more complicated for the consumer to navigate. The filter is the sommelier or the wine merchant . The producer, the offer, the sommeliers, the wine merchants, all of this was connected about ten years ago. And the American sommeliers have been very alert from this point of view.
Faster than the French… Yes, and so much the better for them. From there, there was a real search for the man who made the wine. Another listening, and perhaps the perception of another work, closer to the earth. This does not mean that the big house does not offer very, very good cuvées, that is part of its history. They are two totally different philosophies. We sell big houses, that's not the point. But they have less need of me making myself their apostle. I prefer to defend people who need to be revealed. Did you feel this movement coming? Yes, very early on, of course. But to offer this à la carte offer at Le Cinq, everything was done very gently and gently. I started with five or six winegrowers, I offer about forty now. Today, I always have at least one or two winegrowers among the three proposals at the “basin” of Le Cinq. Not to do so would be heresy and it would mean that I am not in the movement. Twenty years ago, this was not necessary. From now on, it is the opposite. Customers are applicants? Of course. Even if you need prescribers, people who know how to talk about the winemaker they are proposing, otherwise the customer is afraid because he doesn't know. Yesterday, at table 8, I had Brazilians, nice as anything. I offered them some Bérêche. They didn't dare. They preferred to take a Comtes de Champagne from Taittinger. Why ? I do not know. Maybe because they didn't know me and I didn't have my grape pinned to my jacket (laughs). 000 bottles of champagne per year. I need volume. The brand that I referenced at the moment is Charles Heidsieck because I really like their champagne. It's almost 10,000 bottles a year, and they give me some. When I talk about a winemaker like Bérêche, these are very small quantities. Frédéric Savart at Écueil, it's a disaster to have one! If you phone him, you won't get a pin. But if I tell him “Fred, listen, you'll sell me 400 bottles and I'll bottle them for six months”, he makes an effort for the George-V. Otherwise, there is nothing. It's crazy. What are the stars of this movement? There are many: Selosse, Savart, Bérêche, Antoine Paillard in Bouzy, Collin, Diebolt, Brochet in Villers-aux-Nœuds. But it's also Laval, Suenen, Pouillon… and then Jean-Marc Sélèque, whom I adore. It's crazy ! Boom! Boom! Boom! We went from something very boring to a relationship with the likeable winegrower. Me, I only like that. When there isn't someone behind the brand, it's not interesting. In champagne, we didn't have that. Today, we are looking for the winegrower's soul. And your last favourite? The one I tasted and which was wonderful, was Emmanuel Brochet. I went there in August, it was great. It is only 2 hectares. Nothing for sale. But being offered at the George-V is a huge spotlight. Of course! It's super interesting for them. But in this case, we are faced with low production. Who are the fans of these confidential cuvées? The Japanese. They are crazy about champagne. For a long time. They know the small winegrowers? Yes! Americans too. Foreigners even know these little houses more than we do. Have you ever discovered a house while talking to your customers? No, not at all. But by "radio stopper", yes, between winegrowers. Have you ever heard of a large house talking to you about a smaller one? Rarely, except under the cloak. It is even more unlikely that a small house will tell me about a big one. Apart from one or two who are making incredible efforts like Roederer who is on the rise. Because there is real work in the vines that is carried out on their property. When you are yourself in the vineyards, you see it. They have an organic discourse and they do it. They are respected by the winegrowers. You who have been keen on competitions, are there any that are dedicated exclusively to champagne? It would be a very good idea because champagne is a very elaborate wine, even if some claim that it is not is not wine. It would simply be necessary to find money and a sponsor.
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