Entertainment
Jay-Z ‘proud’ to welcome Moët Hennessy on board as company buys 50% stake in his fancy champagne
Moët Hennessy has bought a 50% stake in Jay-Z’s fancy champagne brand.
The rapper, 51, is just one of the many celebrities who have launched their own alcohol brands since finding fame.
Ryan Reynolds has his own gin line, Brad Pitt has his own wine and more recently, Kendall Jenner dropped her very own tequila.
As for Jay-Z, he’s invested in champagne and is the proud owner of his fancy champers brand Armand de Brignac, also known as Ace of Spades.
It launched in 2014 and has just secured a lucrative partnership with Moët Hennessy, with Jay-Z revealing he is ‘proud’ to welcome the company, specialising in champagne and ‘exceptional wine’, on board.
Convinced the partnership will boost the ‘commercial power’ of his own champagne label, produced in France, Jay-Z said in a statement: ‘I’m proud to welcome the Arnault family into ours through this partnership that began with Alexandre Arnault and continued with his father Bernard Arnault and Philippe Schaus, at my home in Los Angeles.
‘It is a partnership that has felt familiar the entire time. We are confident that the sheer power of the Moët Hennessy global distribution framework, its unparalleled portfolio strength and its long-established track record of excellence in developing luxury brands will give Armand de Brignac the commercial power it needs to grow and flourish even further.’
LVMH Moët Hennessy will take over the global distribution of Jay-Z’s brand that doesn’t exactly come cheap, with bottles of champagne boasting a price tag of between $350 and $65,000 (around £250 and £46k).
Jay-Z will retain a 50% ownership of the brand.
Speaking about the partnership on CNBC, Jay-Z revealed why he wanted to get involved with Moët Hennessy and said: ‘We built from the ground up, we wanted to do things right. The integrity of it had to be right… it had to be in Champagne, because it can’t be called champagne unless it’s from the region.
‘When we build luxury products, whatever we’re building, Moet Hennessy goes about it the same way. We were aligned in our thoughts on integrity and passion in the things that we build. It started with Alexander Arnault… and it started out from a place of respect and it built pretty quickly.’
Jay-Z also discussed the inspiration behind creating his own champagne and said it was spurred on by his decision to boycott Cristal back in 2006.
He used to sing about the brand and include the champagne product in his videos, but Jay-Z ditched Cristal after its managing director suggested the rapper was brining the brand unwanted attention.
Asked if he thought rappers were damaging the Cristal brand, managing director Frédéric Rouzaud told The Economist at the time: ‘That’s a good question, but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.’
Jay-Z responded by no longer supporting Cristal and instead launched his own.
‘We were just kids celebrating being alive, there were reports that kids from our neighbourhood wouldn’t make it past 21. We were exploring luxury band and came across Cristal, we popularised the brand within our community… we were happy being consumers of this brand,’ he said on CNBC.
‘As the universe would have it, an opportunity came shortly thereafter and it was just perfect to build our own thing – the same way we built Roc Nation. The idea of it was we wanted a record deal, it wasn’t a plan to build a big media company.
‘We wanted a record deal – when we couldn’t get one, we built our own. The same way those comments forced us to do our own thing. It’s a happy day and I feel very vindicated from that time.’
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