Champagne Cooler With Branches To Hold The Bubbly. The Enchanting Tree for Perrier Jouet Champagne by Tord Boontje.

As part of its artistic heritage, Perrier-Jouët continues its tradition of supporting and collaborating with artists and designers. This year the brand unveiled "The Enchanting Tree", a creation that reinvents the gesture of champagne.



Six participants can pluck a flute of Perrier-Jouët’s Belle Epoque cuvee from the tree designed by Tord Boontje. At its base, an ice bucket preserves the champagne’s coolness. Perrier-Jouët and Tord Boontje collaboration is rooted in a shared appreciation of Nature, Art Nouveau & craftsmanship.



Inspired by Nature as an inexhaustible source of inspiration, the designer has reinterpreted nature light-heartedly to create a fairytale in honour of spring, with floral forms flowing through a golden hand-worked tree.




With his hand-worked metal branches, the leaves soldered one by one, the anemones lacquered in white; Tord Boontje has reinvented the tasting ritual to create a decidedly Perrier-Jouët moment.





In 1902, a spray of Japanese anemones designed by Emile Gallé heralded the emergence of an artistic movement, Art Nouveau, symbolic of a yearning to which Perrier-Jouët has always remained true:


Inspired by those iconic swirling anemones, Tord Boontje designed a fluid and flowing tree, a plant sculpture with anemones and champagne flutes for blossoms. Suspended in mid-air in order to maintain the coolness of the champagne, they bathe the golden branches in light, reflecting the pearly drops of water on the ice bucket below. A refined and resolutely modern Perrier-Jouët creation, lending a hint of the sublime to the tasting of a Belle Epoque cuvée.



Tord Boontje, an artist born in 1968 in the Netherlands, studied industrial design at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (1986-1991) then at the Royal College of Art in London (1992-1994), before founding his own design studio in 1996 in London. He draws inspiration from nature and incessantly explores the relationship between nature and technology: the association with Perrier-Jouët was thus a marriage made in heaven. "My ideas come to me while strolling in the forest and observing the way light and nature interact" explains the designer, who refuses to link modernism and minimalism.

Perrier Jouet

photos courtesy of Perrier Jouet, The Wine Sleuth  and Cocorosa

Can't Pay 20k For Jeff Koons and Dom Pérignon's Balloon Venus? Get The Limited Gift Box Versions Instead.

The news broke last June that artist Jeff Koons and Dom Pérignon collaborated on a limited number (650 worldwide) of manually assembled and hand polished champagne holders inspired by Koons' Balloon Venus.



The two-foot tall polyurethane resin version (shown above) of the artist's bulbous take on the 25,000 year old fertility symbol, Venus of Willendorf, was designed to cradle a bottle of Dom Pérignon Rosé Vintage 2003 and is offered in a limited edition of 650 worldwide costing $20,000 a piece.


above: Jeff Koons and Dom Pérignon's Richard Geoffroy with Koons' Balloon Venus for Dom Pérignon design and the hot pink full-sized sculpture that inspired it.



If you can't afford the $20,000 Balloon Venus bottle holder (and if you can, I'd like to be your friend) than perhaps the limited edition gift box is a better choice.



The Limited Edition gift box was designed by Jeff Koons himself for both Dom Pérignon Vintage 2004 and Dom Perignon Rose Vintage 2003. The exterior of the boxes feature silk-screened spot-varnished images of a yellow Balloon Venus and a hot pink Balloon Venus (to match the respective cuvees) on a dark background.


above: Koons' full-sized Balloon Venus in yellow

From the outside, the gift box extends the feeling of being in the presence of Balloon Venus, as the reproduction features a 360 degree view of the sculpture.



A view of the artist’s studio is visible on the reflective surface of the Balloon Venus, a reference to the place where Jeff Koons takes his inspiration, just as the Abbey of Hautvillers is where Richard Geoffroy, Chef de Cave of Dom Pérignon, creates the Dom Pérignon vintages.

The gift box opens to expose the bottle, unveiling first an elaborate design that simulates the iridescent interior of the original sculpture made of high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating dress. The iconic Dom Pérignon bottle erupts, exactly as it does from the body of the Balloon Venus for Dom Pérignon.



Similar to the boxes, the bottle foils give a pop twist to the color of its cuvée, Blanc or Rose, interpreting the tension between the colors and the dark bottle. It bears a metallic shield with the same color layout as the foil and the box.



The label plays with colored surface on the depth of the shield, emphasizing its allure, playful and yet mysterious.



Richard Geoffroy of Dom Pérignon said that the label first approached Koons with the idea two years ago, and gave the artist free rein on the end design of the package.



The limited edition boxes can be found at select specialty liquor and wine stores all over the world.

Dom Pérignon has previously collaborated with such artists as David Lynch, Marc Newsom, Martin Szekely, and the estate of Andy Warhol for limited edition champagne buckets and bottles.

Dom Pérignon
images courtesy of Dom Perignon and Jeff Koons

A Bevvy of Buckets: Modern Champagne Coolers & Ice Buckets

 


With so much buzz about the Globalight, Karim Rashid and Veuve Clicquot's collaboration that produced a glowing pink champagne holder that doubles as a cooling tote and keeps bottles at the ideal temperature for up to two hours, I thought I might share some lovely modern champagne bucket alternatives from Veuve Clicquot as well as from two other companies.


Above: Only 500 Globalights have been created worldwide. In the United States, they are available for purchase here and cost $4,500.

Don't want to spend $4,500 on a champagne bucket? Here are some much less expensive alternatives from Veuve Clicquot:


Buy the above buckets here.

And for other fabulous options, here are two other companies.

On the pricey side, l'Orfèvrerie d'Anjou, a French company, is a world leader of shiny pewter in the luxury industry. They are goldsmiths who have literally been plying their trade for almost three centuries and they are a respected company, whose products start at around $350.00. Here are a few of their more unsual and modern buckets:

Buy them all here.

Another company who makes pretty modern champagne buckets for a lower price than the aforementioned, with some designed by Karim Rashid for the Kohinoor collection, is Magpie of India:



Buy Magpie's buckets here.

You can also find the Magpie buckets along with other modern champagne buckets by Blomus and Alessi at Unica Home.

Cheers!