Wine Weekend Champagne Giveaway: Interview with Josh Adler of Paris Wine Company

Last Updated:

1/27/2024

G Bayliss

I’m often asked what I miss most about Paris when Stateside. The list is inevitably long, but the access to quality, affordable French wines is always up there. Sound familiar? Enter Paris Wine Company, a wonderful exporter allowing Americans to enjoy a bespoke selection of bottles at home.

Paris Wine Company is hosting its first Wine Weekend in Paris this fall and it’s not to be missed. The weekend boasts a welcome dinner at YARD restaurant, a portfolio tasting at Verjus, and several events centered around Champagne.

Yi Wang

We’re teaming up with Paris Wine Company to give away two tickets to Wine Weekend’s day trip to Champagne on October 10^th(310eur value). Details on how to enter are below, but first, to get in the mood to celebrate our favorite bubble beverage, we sat down with Josh, Owner of Paris Wine Company, to learn more:

Vincent Brassinne, Paris Wine Company

HiP: Champagne carries a particular allure that many other wines don’t. Can you tell us a bit about the region and how the beverage gained this reputation?

Josh Adler: Champagne has been synonymous with celebration for hundreds of years. One story goes that before the modern Champagne bottling technique was perfected, over one third of every bottle opened had to be poured off, so such an expensive waste was only possible at the best occasions. Today, the Champagne producers as a group have been incredibly quality-conscious – the regulations on making Champagne are the strictest of any wine region in the world, and so the quality of an average bottle of Champagne is still really high.

Simon Law

HiP: Champagne has a prominent place in Wine Weekend’s events. Why did you choose to focus on this region?

JA: In Paris, people love Champagne – and don’t save it for only holidays or special occasions. A flute of Champagne is de rigeur before any nice meal. When invited to someone’s home, a bottle of Champagne is the natural thing to bring; remember that if any of your Parisian friends invite you over.

Paris Wine Company

HiP: When thinking of champagne, “trendy” may not the first word to come to peoples’ minds. Are exciting things happening in the world of bubbly?

JA: The biggest trend in Champagne is “Brut Nature” – meaning no dosage at all added to the wine. Most people are used to drinking Brut, or Extra Brut, which both have a small amount of liqueur (sugar) added to the wine during the bottling to help round it out. Brut Nature has nothing added at all, so the wines can be quite bracing. Even large houses like Roederer have introduced luxury “Brut Nature” bottles. Some people love the purity of this style, but it’s not for everyone.

Paris Wine Company

HiP: If you had to choose a favorite champagne maker, who would it be?

JA: Please try anything you can from Ruppert Leroy. Benedicte Ruppert and Manu Leroy farm just four hectares of organic vines in the Aube, the southernmost part of Champagne. In addition to the vineyards, they grow their own vegetables, raise animals, and even built their straw-bale winery and log cabin gite (holiday rental house) themselves. They make fewer than 3,000 cases of Champagne per year, so it can be tough to find, but the new releases have just landed in the US, so should be available at a few retailers and on our website…. at least for a short while!

Paris Wine Company

How to Enter

To enter to win two tickets to the Champagne day trip, follow @hipparis on Instagram, like our giveaway photo from today, and tag a friend in a comment. A winner will be chosen at random on Tuesday, August 30^th and notified via Instagram.

For more information and to to book tickets for the Champagne day trip, click here.

WRITTEN BY

Erin Dahl

Erin’s had a whimsical affair with Paris since her first trip as a wide-eyed teenager. She is Editor for the HiP Paris Blog as well as Co-founder of Content Coopérative, Paris’s first English-native content agency.