Neither of the publicists listed in the release returned my emails requesting comment yesterday, and none of the financial details of the agreement have been released. "We are proud to announce that Sovereign Brands, a New York-based wine and spirits company owned by the Berish family, has sold its interest in the Armand de Brignac ('Ace of Spades') Champagne brand to a new company led by the globally-renowned Shawn 'Jay Z' Carter," the statement read. So why are so many outlets now reporting that Jay Z bought some, or all, of the Armand de Brignac brand this week-and portraying it as a new development? The burst of publicity can be traced to a press release put out via a Canadian newswire yesterday morning. A prominent liquor executive told me Jay Z owned a piece of Armand de Brignac brand, along with Cattier and a company called Sovereign Brands. A wine distributor and a record executive confirmed this as well one of my sources pegged the value of Jay Z's stake at $50 million.Īfter Empire State of Mind came out in 2011, even Jay Z's friend, marketing guru Steve Stoute, finally acknowledged that Jay Z had a financial interest in Armand de Brignac in his 2012 book The Tanning of America. Upon my return to the United States, I found the story unraveling even further. "There's a misunderstanding regarding how Jay saw the bottle," a company publicist said. When I confronted the folks at Cattier about this, they backtracked. He insisted that there was no "financial involvement," and that, more or less, Jay Z simply liked the champagne so much that he decided to feature it in one of his videos.īut Armand de Brignac didn't ship to the United States until the fall of 2006-months after the gold bottle appeared in his "Show Me What You Got" video. The company's commercial director told me about Cattier's history and explained that Jay Z had discovered Armand de Brignac in a New York wine shop. There, I saw thousands of gold bottles glowing faintly in the damp dark-each waiting to be stamped with an Armand de Brignac spade logo that would differentiate it from Antique Gold. Upon my arrival, a guide took me on a tour of Cattier's 150-year-old cellars, which served as part of a network of underground shelters during the second World War. I arranged a meeting with the head of Cattier at the company's beautiful headquarters in the tiny village of Chigny-Les-Roses and headed across the pond. While reporting Empire State of Mind, I decided to travel to France to get to the bottom of the story. New York wine buyer Lyle Fass was less kind, dubbing Armand de Brignac "the biggest rip-off in the history of wine." Though Armand de Brignac has since earned its share of praise (frequently from Jay Z in his own songs), some wine critics have given it ratings much lower than Cristal and closer to Veuve Clicquot-a fine champagne to be sure, but one planted firmly in the same $60 price range as Antique Gold. Representatives from Cattier, the French company that makes the champagne, described it as a wine that was "making its North American debut this year, after enjoying success as a premium, high-end brand in France." Its gold bottle bore a striking resemblance to Antique Gold, a brand discontinued by Cattier in 2006 priced at about $60. Or at least, it was billed as new-sort of. Later that year, a mysterious gold bottle appeared in his video for "Show Me What You Got." The public was soon introduced to the new bubbly, Armand de Brignac, nicknamed Ace of Spades after its bold logo. So he called for a boycott of Cristal and stopped rapping about it. Many in the hip-hop world took the comments as a major sleight some sensed racism, including Jay Z.
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