Piper-Heidsieck awarded the IWSC’s 2022 Sparkling Wine Producer Trophy

With their expressive wines, impressive commitment to sustainability and constant desire to innovate, Champagne house Piper-Heidsieck are the worthy winners of this year’s IWSC 2022 Sparkling Wine Producer Trophy, sponsored by Denomination Design.

“We are B Corp Certified” Piper-Heidsieck’s website confidently announces. Founded in 1785, the family-owned producer is rightly proud to be the first Champagne house to be recognised with this rigorous sustainability standard.

“Inside our Champagne House and our vineyards, we evaluate the impact of climate change

and its dangers every single day,” the team says. “We acknowledge our responsibilities to limit our impact on the planet and the people. We believe that B Corp is a powerful and inspirational way to accelerate our transformation and encourage us to make even stronger commitments.”

B-Corp certification is a hugely impressive achievement, and testament to Piper-Heidsieck’s rigourous approach to viticulture and winemaking. Emilien Boutillat is the young Chef de Cave at Piper-Heidsieck, and part of the team driving sustainability standards. “With global warming, we constantly need to adapt our winemaking methods in order to keep the style of Piper-Heidsieck consistent,” he says.

In terms of winemaking decisions, this means blocking malolactic fermentation to retain freshness in the wine, limiting sulphites and using site-specific stainless-steel tanks to preserve the integrity of terroir. “Since 2018 we also decided to increase slightly the percentage of reserve wines in the blend to bring more complexity to the it and ensure the best quality,” Emilien explains.

At this year’s IWSC competition, the judges were certainly impressed by the complexity and refinement of the sparkling wines Piper-Heidsieck showed. Of their 95-point Brut 2014, tasted from magnum, our judges remarked on the “complex toasted hazelnut notes,” the wine’s “finesse and elegance” and its “complex finish of confected, toasted biscuit and a dryness to the lingering flavour sensation.”

Emilien is elegantly understated when it comes to describing the Champagne house’s wines: “I like to talk about Piper-Heidsieck Champagnes as vibrant champagnes, around fruit vibrancy and freshness. It is about being complex without being complicated.”