Dom Pérignon | Come Quickly, I Am Tasting The Stars

One by one, the eagles landed in Marfa, Texas to inaugurate the release of the new Dom Pérignon Rosé Vintage 2008—born in France, prepared with infinite care, and now ready to dazzle in the desert 14 years later. Experiencing the thrill of the unknown were guests actor and skate icon Evan Mock, Alton Mason, just announced to play Little Richard in Baz Lurmann’s Elvis biopic, stylist and creative director Nicola Formichetti (who worked with Lady Gaga on her own recent Dom Pérignon collaboration), actress Dree Hemingway, activist and fashion designer Aurora James, musician Kilo Kish, among a vibrant collection of tastemakers from across the USA.   

Why import such a cool crew—and several times their weight in cases of pink Champagne—all the way to the winter sun of Marfa, West Texas? Enzo Gouedar, DP brand Director and expert oenologist explains: “When the climatic conditions come together to make Dom Pérignon into a rosé, it’s a very special year. So we wanted to do something very special to bring it to light.” 

In 2008, the conditions in question featured a cold summer and a sizzling hot September which heightened the harvest taste of both the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes grown in the vast vineyards of Champagne, France. They were taken down to mature in the darkness of the caves, and by combining the craft of alchemy and modern innovations, emerge as a naturally effervescent, peachy, rosy-pink hued elixir. The resulting Rosé Vintage 2008 is born from these vibrant contrasts—the dark and the light. And you can taste that seductive duality in every sensual molecule as it passes tingling over your tongue…

Marfa is a purdy-as-a-picture classic, sweetly sleepy West Texas small town, with a population of locals that hovers under the 2,000 mark, scattered over rustic ranch land. But when outsiders do arrive, the novelty factor means that they usually receive a hospitable welcome. Perhaps the most exciting thing to happen to Marfa in the 20th Century was when Warner Bros filmed the epic movie Giant back in 1955, and megastars Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean descended from the Hollywood skies for the two month location shoot. 

After that, everything was quiet until a young artist named Donald Judd turned up with a vision that would forever change the connotation of the word ‘Marfa.’ He had been looking for a location to create a new base for his idea of large permanent installations which he had begun in a loft on 19th Street in New York, searching across the South West from Colorado through Arizona, Utah and New Mexico to Baja, California. While visiting Marfa in the 1970s, he discovered the abandoned army buildings on Cavalry Row. The town was beautiful as well as practical, and inspired, he began building and adapting, brick-by-brick turning this remote outpost into a contemporary art paradise—a unique environment defined by expansive space and pure design.

Today, art and architecture speak together as one at Judd’s prestigious Chinati Foundation. This was an innovation on a grand scale, and it drew admirers; it’s no coincidence that many of the pioneering practitioners of the Land Art, Light and Space and Pop movements (Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin, John Wesley, Claes Oldenburg, Yayoi Kusama, Frank Stella, Carl Andre) were good friends with Donald Judd. Disrupting the city-based studio system, at his invitation they descended into the West Texas desert to make and show their groundbreaking work in a setting that gave it enough room to literally shine.

And that is the link between the luxury heritage of Dom Pérignon and the experience of Marfa and it’s history of independent, inventive mavericks. Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon was the first in France, and the world, to make a pure and refined wine from the grapes that were cultivated around his remote monastery. He sent some to the King of France to sample—at the time, le Roi Soleil Louis XIV—who provided the very first celebrity endorsement of his new creation. 

The OG Dom P passed away peacefully in 1715, after building his brand nonstop, even palling up to create with that other Dom, Theirry Ruinart, who was at the same Abbey. Skip forward a couple of centuries and the demand for luxury from the industrial kingpins of The New World leads to the impromptu creation of the Dom Pérignon brand. The label was first stamped on a special shipment of 1921 vintage Moet Chandon cuveé ordered by tobacco and power grid magnate James Buchanan Duke in the early 1930s—and it was an instant hit among the cognoscenti. Prohibition be damned. 

Throughout the intensely immersive Dom Pérignon Marfa adventure, handsome cowboy serveurs followed the guests’ every move, quick on the draw to pour, and each meal was tailored to enhance the taste sensations of the rosé. What lessons in luxury were learned? Many. You can drink Rosé Vintage 2008 in the daytime. Out on the range. At sunset. Alone. Together with friends. Looking at Art. With the barbecue. Or alongside la gastronomie, around a custom-designed Light and Space installation table glowing with magenta-neon light. You can drink Rosé Vintage 2008 anytime. It’s a company policy that exact production volumes of bottles of vintages are never revealed. As with every luxury product, there are of course limits—but don’t worry. “There is more than enough,” confirmed Dom Pérignon’s Nelson Elliot Gillum, the hardest working and most fabulous ringleader of this most intense Marfaexperience, between one of his customary grins.

The stars at night are famously big and bright deep in the heart of Texas. It’s serendipity, then, that “Come quickly—I am tasting the stars” is a famous bon mot attributed to Dom Pérignon himself (but subsequently found to be a much later advertising tagline.) Whether the words ‘Venez vite : je goûte les étoiles’ really passed his lips is irrelevant. It’s a damn good line. And it sums up the DOMxMarfa experience quite perfectly. A delicious legacy, to pass across our lips, into the Future.  

And What of the People?

With a long career in contemporary cultural innovation, Yvonne Force Villareal is an art maven par excellence. So how did she find herself in the windswept wilds of Marfa? When city sophisticate Force met and married artist Leo Villarreal in the late 90s, he came with some baggage. Good baggage: an authentic West Texas ranching heritage complete with homestead, acreage, and scores of real live animals to take care of. Eight generations have lived and worked from Brite House, and after years of steering Art Production Fund out of New York, the homestead is now Yvonne’s base to conduct her contemporary art encounters. Absolutely passionate about sharing all that she loves about Marfa, Yvonne was a key force behind the Dom Pérignon takeover. From sunset sipping to breaking out her rhinestone disco boots for the final evening’s glamorous party (where Evan Mock turned dj with a playlist including Sade, Michael Jackson and Beyonce hits) she was an active  and excited participant as well as a host. She tried to put the experience into words. “Has anyone said ‘extraordinary’ yet? But it’s been more than extra-ordinary— it surpasses that. Marfa has so much to offer—and on top of that, adding the layer of the Dom Pérignon experience the heightened sense of design, the taste, the visuals… It really was a desert dream—a surreal, sublime, desert dream.”

Force continues: ”It’s not easy making things happen in the desert, you have to bring the materials, you have to bring in the the people to make them, you have to raise the money. But here in Marfa, you have an ongoing audience of very passionate people who are coming on their own pilgrimage to interact with the art here.” And this includes the thousands of Prada pilgrims that roll up the effortlessly picturesque Route 90 highway each year. Provocateurs Elmgreen and Dragset's audacious 2005 installation of Prada Marfa that started a snowball of exposure that’s still drawing the crowds almost 17 years later, perhaps now more than ever. The unusual journey to get there is all part of the experience. Prada Marfa has all the buzz of a real Prada store in any Metropolis from Milan to Shanghai. But the difference is, you can’t buy anything. Pictures are all you can take away—and finding the space outside the facade slot to get in an optional selfie pose is a high pressure pursuit. Villareal was out there from Day 1, and the piece has become symbolic of her mission here. “After commissioning Elmgreen and Dragset to create Prada Marfa—all in all that took about two years from the commissioning to when we opened it, I realised that…. I understood that we could accomplish anything that we set forth to do. We always knew that we wanted to do interesting and important things here, and it’s happening.”

Jet-set photographer Douglas Friedman built his own gracefully Modernist ranch just minutes from the centre of town, but this being Marfa, that means his glass walls are framed by nothing but the wide open range. Hosting events throughout week, he put his cheeky spin on things, coining the guerrilla hashtag #DOMxMarfa to cosy up with the official ones. He’s brought thousands of guests through his eclectic art-filled home, full of colorful texture clashes, and has boundless enthusiasm for the town to share with all of them. His welcoming attitude is infectious. “I’ve been in Marfa for ten years now. And its a place that has so much to offer—it’s so alive, it’s different today than it was yesterday. I am amazed by how much everything here is constantly evolving—new people, new energy, new art—it’s really a new experience for me everyday. I’m never bored.” 

Carlos Eric Lopez took the trip as an opportunity to play out a high-fashion-Western fusion theme, throwing some striking Rodeo rider silhouettes in his big black Stetson, appliqué leather pants topped off with a Prada-diamond bolo. “It was my first time in Marfa, and it will definitely not be my last. It was beyond bubbly, it was the most beautiful, sparkling trip. Being from LA, and being a photographer, Marfa just felt so cinematic, like stepping into a movie set. Like being stage at Paramount, at Universal, but in a real way—all the art and beauty and the culture here. I was just really here for it and I had the best time.”

Kilo Kish, Los Angeles-based musician, also found herself in possession of a shiny new cowboy hat, which made a strong statement paired with her bright red Marcus Garvey Pan African Flag sweater from Tremaine Emory’s Levis x Denim Tears collab. “I absolutely loved it. I loved going to the Chinati Foundation, I loved seeing the Judds, seeing where Donald Judd lived and worked. It was also just a really fun mix of people on the trip. Everyone was working on different things, and it’s nice to go on a trip where there’s such an eclectic group. I just really enjoyed myself.”

These were sentiments shared by Nick Delli Santi: “These have been some of the most exceptional days of my life.” His girlfriend, actress Dree Hemingway, concurred: “It’s a magical, secret little spot. It’s like a ‘unicorn’ of towns.”

---

Photographed by Finalis Valdez