Veuve Clicquot cellar master Dominique Demarville is leaving the company at the end of the year to take up the position as chef de cave at Laurent-Perrier. Recruited to replace him at Clicquot by the retiring cellar master Jacques Peters back in 2006, Demarville has apparently again been sought out by the soon to retire incumbent chef de cave at Laurent-Perrier, Michel Fauconnet, planning his succession. Fauconnet is 67 this year and has worked at Laurent-Perrier since 1973.
This news about one of the highest profile winemakers in the whole of Champagne, comes from the reliably well informed website of Sophie Claeys. It was Claeys who was first with the similarly surprising, if less shocking, news last September, that the newly appointed chef de cave at Piper Heidsieck, Séverine Frerson was leaving Piper after only weeks in the job, to take over from Hervé Deschamps when he retires as chef de cave at Perrier-Jouët. Deschamps has been at Perrier-Jouët since in 1983, and head winemaker there since 1993.
The Veuve Clicquot cellar-master position is traditionally a ‘job for life’. Demarville now 53 is only the sixth man to hold the reigns since 1890 and his five predecessors have all retired in the position, three of them spending over 40 years in the job. One of the nicest people you could wish to meet in Champagne, with a top-class reputation for his winemaking skills, before Clicquot, Demarville worked at G.H. Mumm for a dozen years, making great strides in restoring the reputation of this house’s wines. The move represents quite a coup for Laurent-Perrier. No-one at either Laurent-Perrier or Veuve Clicquot was available to comment on this dramatic news.