Dom Pérignon employs Christoph Waltz for P2 campaign

Dom Pérignon has announced a new marketing campaign for its P2 Champagne featuring Oscar-winning actor Christopher Waltz.

Christopher Waltz in the new P2 campaign

The new campaign, called ‘Meet the Ultimate Dom Pérignon, P2 Plénitude Deuxième. Touched with plénitude’, sees Waltz “capture” the multitude of expressions and emotions contained within a bottle of P2.

The photography was handled by Billy Kidd, a photographer well known for his expressive portrait work, which made him the “natural” choice to shoot the campaign.

Shot in black and white the pictures are described as capturing, “the suspended moment of someone in the midst of fully savouring an experience.”

The campaign also includes a 30-second video featuring Waltz enjoying a glass of P2 set to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (which you can watch below).

Dom Pérignon’s vintage-only Champagnes are said to age in a series of stages – or plénitudes – when the Champagne can be disgorged and released to offer a different expression of the same vintage.

Each Dom Pérignon Plénitude has a distinct character. The first plénitude, Dom Pérignon vintage, is revealed after at least eight years in the cellars, depending on the vintage.

According to Dom Pérignon, P2 is a product that requires more time to reach its second plénitude, and it is the result of 16 years of maturation.

Previously called Oenothèque, Dom Pérignon changed the name of its late-release Champagne to P2 in 2014. “Dom Pérignon has developed through plenitudes since day one, so there is nothing new, but we felt that instead of referring to oenothèque, which is the site holding the inventory, it was better to refer to plénitude,” explained Dom Pérignon cellar master Richard Geoffroy, speaking to the drinks business when the P2 1998 was launched.

Explaining further the plenitude concept, Geoffroy said that Dom Pérignon, when left in contact with its lees, does not evolve in a linear fashion, but ages in a series of stages, producing “windows of opportunity, or plenitudes” when he believes the Champagne can be disgorged and released to bring consumers a different expression of the same vintage.

“The programme is based on the observation that these wines don’t develop in a steady or linear way, but in plateaus, giving windows of expressions,” he recorded.

Geoffroy said that he witnesses “no less than three windows in the life of a given vintage,” pointing out that the first plenitude comes around eight years after the vintage, which is when Dom Pérignon Vintage is released, while the second one arrives between 12 and 16 years – which was previously the first oenothèque release, but is now known as P2.

“Eventually there is a third window, after around 30 years, when the Champagne has spent no less than 20 years on its lees,” he said.