Rapper Jay Z loves Armand de Brignac champagne so much … he has bought the company. The American hip-hop star, 44, is reported to have acquired the €300-a-bottle brand – known as “Ace of Spades” because of its distinctive label – which has featured more than once in his music videos, notably in his 2006 single Show Me What You Got.
The wine is part of the celebrated Cattier champagne house, and is sold in less-than-sober gold-coloured bottles designed by the fashion house Courrèges.
Le Monde declared that the de luxe label means more to music fans than it did to winemaking experts and was more a “case of clever marketing than oenological tradition”.
While the Cattier family has owned vineyards since 1763 and has been making its own champagne at Chigny-les-Roses – between Reims and Epernay, in the heart of the Champagne region in France – since 1918, the Armand de Brignac brand, produced by just eight people, had been dormant since the 1950s.
It was resurrected in 2006 – the same year Jay Z fell out with celebrated champagne house Louis Roederer, which makes his former favourite drink, Cristal, over comments made by one of the company’s directors.
The star, whose real name is Shawn Carter and who is married to fellow music superstar Beyoncé, was reported to have sought another champagne after being angered by a Roederer executive’s comments about Cristal’s popularity in the rap world, which was described as “unwelcome attention”. “I view his comments as racist,” Jay Z wrote.
The resurrected Armand de Brignac brand was brought to public attention in the video for Show Me What You Got, presented to Jay Z in a silver case.
The rapper and impresario, said to be worth around $520m by Forbes magazine, was reported to have made an offer for the label that the New York based Sovereign Brands wines and spirits group, owner of the trademark in the United States, “could simply not refuse”. No details of the deal have been released.
In September 2012, Jay Z and Beyoncé held a fundraiser for President Barack Obama at the 40/40 Club in Manhattan that included a tower of 350 bottles of Ace of Spades worth an estimated $280,000. The champagne is served in a number of New York nightclubs and is popular with sports teams. The company’s large bottles, including the 30 litre “Midas”, have become a must-have for the wealthy and famous. The American businessman and gambler Don Johnson once purchased a Midas of Armand de Brignac during a party in a London nightclub for £120,000, making it the most expensive bottle of champagne ever.
In his song Young Forever, Jay Z envisages a life where “you never get old and the Champagne’s always cold”. At least he is now guaranteed one of his dreams.
