Following the launch of a new rosé Champagne from his brand Porte Noire, internationally renowned actor Idris Elba talks to Natalie Earl about his foray into Champagne, and bringing it back down to earth.
‘It wasn’t a conscious choice to be part of a Champagne brand. Seven years ago, Champagne Sanger invited me to visit its Champagne school. And I thought, what a lovely invite, to go to one of the oldest winemaking schools in Champagne.
‘I said to my wife – whom I was dating at the time – do you want to come to Champagne? It sounded very romantic. We had this incredible, full, rich day of history, skill, sharing, and the students were really happy to see me. I learned how to twist the bottles [riddling], and all about the cuvées and vineyards. And we topped it off in one of the vineyards eating cheese and drinking Champagne. At the end of the day, they said “we want you to own your own cuvée”. At first I thought, you mean take a few home? I had a big trunk… And they said “No, you’ll have your own, we produce it: we have these lovely batches of grand cru, and you can name it and do what you want with it.
‘My favourite is the Porte Noire Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Vintage (2013, £89 portenoire.co.uk). We haven’t really marketed ourselves around me and celebrity wines. It has my name on it, but we haven’t pushed that element. Celebrity wines tend to have a more transactional approach: the thinking is volume, volume, volume. With our grand cru, there is a volume capacity we can reach, and that’s it. So we are more in tune with people discovering it and liking it, rather than the hard sell.
‘Bad Champagne gives me a residual effect the next day. Finely produ
