Armand de Brignac's Lies Undergoing Wikipedia Revisions

I'm happy to see that the few recent references to Armand de Brignac Champagne found in news searches correctly characterize Armand as a new creation without the history or quality claimed in early company pr.

In the Washington City Paper Sarah Godfrey describes Armand as a "brand hastily created by Cattier to capitalize on Jay-Z’s campaign against Cristal."

Bloomberg.com's Elin McCoy states, in an article on the current interest in "grower" champagnes, states that the "wine is a recent creation from small negociant Champagne Cattier masquerading as a grower champagne, which shows how trendy this category is becoming."

Unfortunately, whoever wrote the headline for McCoy's article obviously didn't bother to read it but scanned for something catchy and then wrote something inaccurate.

However, the Wikipedia entry for Armand de Brignac bears the clear marks of a wily Web 2.0 marketer.  In the interest of a more honest and complete entry, I've added a link to ProHipHop's Coverage .

Update:
Previously I had mentioned here that someone had removed my ProHipHop link but that was apparently an accident.  See the comments below for more.

Update 2:
The Armand Wikipedia entry is quite the active one, now with a link to a post from Dr. Vino's wine blog in which a Wall Street Journal article, which we all missed, is discussed:

In the WSJ story, Jean-Jacques Cattier, the brand owner tells how he was unable to sell his champagne in the American market for 20 years. Brett Berish of Sovereign Brands, a drinks importer and marketer based in New York, approached Cattier about reviving his old brand name "de Brignac." The association of champagne growers, the CIVC, approved of reviving the name providing they added a first name. So they chose Armand since "it sounded kind of noble," according to Cattier in the story.

Related:
ProHipHop Coverage of Armand de Brignac Champagne

Comments

[Tom Morgan]

That was me - wiki wise, I mean. Sorry if I upset a link. I just got interested today. I have a few dumb theories on the origins of the drink - based on descriptions 'subtle and elegant with aromas of brioche bread and dried fruits....' and the composition (a third chardonnay, pinot noir and... that other one) I'm assuming its a rebadging of Cattier's Brut Millésimé. Check out their website and then run a price check - it's incredible how cheap it is. 20 euro a bottle! All of the extra pricing is in the bottle and the spurious 'elite' history that's been pasted onto it!

Drop us a line if this proves helpful. I'll ask around as well.

[Clyde Smith]

Thanks for clearing up the wikipedia editing question. The way it's set up, that would be easy to do.

I think everybody that's looking closely is coming up with the same basic analysis with conflicts mainly in the details. If Jay-Z hadn't put the bottle in his video (or some other similar action) then we'd never hear about it.

It's really pretty blatant.