Robb Read: The Next Dimension
For pioneering furniture designers, 3-D printing is a portal to the future.
Related articles
Audrey Large was never too keen on making things by hand. As a master’s candidate at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands in 2017, she and the other students were pushed into metal or wood workshops, but her preferred method was to create designs on a computer. The catch was how to turn these digital drawings into physical objects; 3-D printing bridged the gap. Instead of meticulously tufting a rug or moulding a porcelain jar as she’d tried to do in the past, Large found she could simply hit “print” for her virtual object to become reality. But the technology didn’t impress her much at first. “I felt it was kind of ugly,” she says of the outcomes. “Not as seducing as the shapes I had in my computer.”
Even so, the promise of circumventing the artisanal aspect of the creation process was too great, so she kept at it. Trial and error became an important part of her work: Large would intentionally run designs through the printer that were structurally unsound to test the device’s limits. When she got stuck, she consulted YouTube and online forums. The final bowls and vases she developed look like they’ve been ripped straight from the colourful digital realms
of Tron or Ready Player One.
“There’s no painting, there’s no coating on the object,” she says. “I like that it’s coming out of the computer, out of the machine. I take it out and I don’t touch it so that it’s closest to the file.”
In recent years, 3-D printing, perhaps dismissed as just a method for creating prototypes or a way for college kids to make plastic bric-à-brac for their friends, has been adopted by a slew of serious designers. They’ve used the machines to produce chairs, tables, vases and even whole wall panels, cementing their spot in a niche-but-growing manufacturing space that shipped 2.1 million printers globally in 2020. It’s a quantum leap forward from when 3-D printers were invented in the mid-’80s, yet the technology is still raw. Despite that, the industry was celebrated last year during the early days of the pandemic, when a group of architects from all over the world used their printers to churn out thousands of face shields for front-line healthcare workers.
The most interesting work, though, is happening at the opposite end of the spectrum from such mass production, by designers who value the machine as a tool that’s capable of forging incredibly complex designs, some that would be otherwise impossible to realise. The apex of this movement is in Europe, particularly Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands, where a rich history of furniture design relied heavily on the handmade. A 3-D printer offers a fresh take on these practices,
or, for some, a way to rebel against them.
Spanish firm Nagami makes a point of only creating furniture that takes full advantage of 3-D printing’s unique capabilities. Like Large, cofounder Manuel Jiménez García began experimenting with digital fabrication while studying for his master’s degree at the Architectural Association in London, before moving on to large-scale 3-D printing. But this was 2009, and there was much less research on the subject. “We were trying to get the concept of 3-D printing that you’re probably used to, which is encapsulated into a desktop-sized box, and take it out of that box and build larger pieces,” he says. Eventually, he bought a bigger machine: a 2.4-metre-tall robotic arm that’s often used in automotive manufacturing. The new tech allowed Nagami to make complex furniture on a grander scale, including the Voxel chair—a seat with an intricate structure that, at first glance, resembles the chaos of tangled computer wires. It was a proof of concept, demonstrating that a design sketched on a computer and manufactured by robots can be even more remarkable than one patiently drawn by human hand.
It’s a much faster process too. Voxel can be 3-D-printed in a few days using one continuous line of plastic filament that’s about 2.4 kilometres long. “It’s literally depositing material particle by particle,” says Jiménez. “That’s something that by hand you couldn’t do, or else you would need to be the most special person on the planet.” Nagami’s ambitions have attracted big-name collaborators like Zaha Hadid Architects. The late architect’s namesake firm drew upon Jiménez’s expertise and hardware to create the Rise chair. The piece features a seamless blue-to-light-green colour gradient, which, like the inner workings of Voxel, is easy to input into a computer but difficult to execute manually.
That’s not to say printing designers want to do away with made-by-hand craftsmanship entirely. Many, like Mathias Bengtsson, consider the tech to be just the first step in a long, fastidious process. “I don’t want to do 3-D printing for the sake of it,” says the Dane, best known for the Spun chaise lounge, which resembles a giant Slinky and is in the Museum of Modern Art New York’s permanent collection. “I want to take it far away from the 3-D printing, and I need to know there’s always hands on it before and after the process, stuff being cast or hand-polished or sanded by craftsmen, artisans. Maybe it’s a reflection that I’m of the generation that was born just before computers came out, so I’m trained to do everything by hand.”
He’s not kidding. Bengtsson couldn’t afford a 3-D printer when he was a student in the late ’90s. Instead, he made a tracing tool to outline shapes on pieces of cardboard, cut them out and stacked them in homage to the S-shaped Panton chair, an iconic modernist design. His DIY construction emulated 3-D printers’ method of adding one layer of filament—usually plastic—on top of the other. Nowadays Bengtsson’s process is a bit more sophisticated. His Cellular chair is 3-D-printed as one big piece of porous epoxy resin; one version is then cast in bronze. Like many of his designs, Cellular, which resembles a metallic hunk of volcanic rock, is one that’s possible only by marrying new technology with old philosophies and techniques: the printer creates the complex pattern, and the artisan gives it a carefully applied finish. Bengtsson’s Growth series takes a similar approach. The twisty, vine-like silhouettes of each chair and table are based on an artificial-intelligence computer program that simulates a seed taking root and growing into a mature plant. The stem’s digitised pattern is then 3-D-printed and cast in different metals, giving the finished product a distinctly organic look; one could easily be forgiven for mistaking the shiny seat for a sculpture. “When there’s a dialogue with the machine, the machine also leaves a little bit of a fingerprint,” he says. “I’m not looking for perfection.”
Bengtsson isn’t the only one combining 3-D printing with AI systems. Synthesis, a design firm in New York, created a program that can generate tens of thousands of different wall-panel patterns, from rigidly geometric versions to ones that look like sound waves. Clients can choose their favourite iterations from a video of the wide-ranging selection. “Each exploration is lifetimes of a designer’s time. That’s not an exaggeration,” says John Meyer, Synthesis’s founder. “I mean, we spent years on the first patterns of these panels. Every vacation I went on, every street I walked down, I did pattern study and exploration. It took me years to come up with 10 to 15 really nice patterns that people tend to like.” Almost all of Synthesis’s wall panels are 3-D-printed in plastic. The firm’s expertise with the technology extends to furnishings, including the cantilevered Karv table and the spherical Santorini fire pit, which can also be made in concrete. All can be customised and cast in various colours.
These sorts of tweaks are easy with 3-D printing, but one aspect that remains difficult—and to some degree unexplored—is the use of different materials. Many still associate the medium with plastic, but a handful of artisans are slowly chipping away at that mould. “I was a bit disappointed because I came from an art school, from design school,” says Dutch designer Olivier van Herpt of his first impressions of 3-D printing. “The physical value of what came out, you were just waiting hours and hours and still ending up with a plastic piece.” Instead, he wanted to print with clay. It took van Herpt about eight years to build his own custom printer that could produce ceramic vessels. His invention can even be paused in the middle of printing, allowing him to shape aspects of the clay by hand before it’s complete. An interesting confluence of man and machine, sure, but why not just throw some vessels on a pottery wheel as ceramists have done for millennia?
As with Jiménez, for van Herpt it has to do with 3-D printing’s specialised capabilities. The technology is very precise, so it can perfectly render extremely detailed patterns, such as the tiny ridges of his new limited-edition white porcelain vase. He also used the printer to put a fresh spin on delftware, the traditional Dutch school of ceramics with a striking blue-and-white colour palette. Van Herpt added cobalt oxide to white clay and then loaded it into the printer; the resulting vases have a gradient that’s achievable only via the combination of bespoke machinery and hands-on craftsmanship.
A more common (and perhaps less time-consuming) medium of experimentation is wood, which has recently been championed by Yves Béhar, a versatile designer whose extensive résumé includes the ever-popular Sayl office chair and PayPal’s no-frills logo. His Vine series of a bowl, a basket, a tray and a vase is manufactured with a composite made of cast-off lumber. Béhar completed the digital sketches and started producing the pieces in about four weeks, a testament to the breakneck speed at which digital manufacturing can operate. But one of the biggest perks of Vine is environmental. “Every particle that I’ve used or that falls off the printer can be built with again,” he says. “So there’s literally no waste.”
In fact, 3-D printing has long been heralded as a cleaner, greener means of production. It’s sometimes referred to as “additive manufacturing” because it adds material in order to create a final product, so you pretty much use what you need. In theory, it’s a less wasteful alternative to traditional, more subtractive methods, which instead take one big piece of wood, say, and cut away the excess. But 3-D printing isn’t quite as pure as has been made out. Polylactic acid (PLA) is the industry’s bioplastic of choice and is considered an eco-friendlier alternative because it’s usually made of corn starch rather than petroleum. But “eco-friendlier” is a relative term. “There are some real concerns about PLA,” says Sherry Handel, executive director of the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association. “It’s great in a lot of ways, because it’s plant-based and because it biodegrades. But it has to be decomposed under high temperatures—not in a landfill, but in an industrial compost situation.”
There’s also an issue of supply chain. PLA will contaminate other plastics during the recycling process, so it can’t just be thrown into the trash with water bottles and yogurt cups. Instead, it has to be sent separately to specialised waste-management facilities, which are in much shorter supply. In summary, better than a single-use plastic, but not great.
Issues with waste are compounded by the fact that 3-D-printed furniture can be perfected only by ongoing experimentation. Failed builds are a necessary part of the development process, as they allow designers to test the limits of what the machine can achieve. “It was years of it not coming out the way we were hoping,” says Meyer. “It’s trial and error, mostly error. That’s what got us here.” Synthesis uses PLA and is careful to separate the castoffs from run-of-the-mill plastics so they can be recycled properly, as do others, but not everyone is so conscientious. Another solution is to break down plastic waste on-site and incorporate it into new designs, a process that’s time-consuming.
“People have to buy an additional machine, and then you have to do the quality control because you’ve got to know if you’re going to be able to use the materials,” says Handel. “It’s another extra step. A lot of companies just want to focus on what they’re doing. You want someone else to deal with that part.” In 2019, Filamentive, a PLA manufacturer based in the UK, estimated that 10 per cent of 3-D prints made in the UK end up in the rubbish heap. Considering the number of machines and their output, about 279,000 kilograms of plastic were wasted. And that’s in just one small corner of the world.
These issues stand a good chance of being solved as artisans continue to experiment with the burgeoning technology. And 3-D printing also has the potential to help achieve another environmental goal: reducing the carbon footprint associated with long-haul shipping. Proponents hope that, as more printing labs pop up around the world, designers will simply email files to faraway facilities to be manufactured. That way, oversized chairs and sofas could be created locally, not shipped on freighters overseas or driven distances cross-country.
Such ambitions, like many problems and limitations in the 3-D-printing space, depend entirely on research and innovation. It’s an imperfect system, at least for now, but for its devotees, there’s little alternative—3-D printing is the future. “Design has to be mind-blowing,” says Jiménez. “Otherwise it’s not worth it.”
Subscribe to the Newsletter
Recommended for you
The World’s First Flying Motorcycle Could Hit the Skies by the End of the Decade
But Mayman Aerospace’s bonkers mega-drones will be here faster. The inventor of the Speeder jet bike and Jetpack has pivoted into the military market, planning to apply that tech to its civilian projects
April 23, 2024
From Electric Surfboards to Biodegradable Golf Balls: 8 Eco-Conscious Yacht Toys for Green and Clean Fun
Just add water and forget the eco-guilt.
By Gemma Harris
October 18, 2023
You may also like.
You may also like.
Watch of the Week: TAG Heuer Formula 1 | Kith
The legendary sports watch returns, but with an unexpected twist.
Over the last few years, watch pundits have predicted the return of the eccentric TAG Heuer Formula 1, in some shape or form. It was all but confirmed when TAG Heuer’s heritage director, Nicholas Biebuyck, teased a slew of vintage models on his Instagram account in the aftermath of last year’s Watches & Wonders 2023 in Geneva. And when speaking with Frédéric Arnault at last year’s trade fair, the former CEO asked me directly if the brand were to relaunch its legacy Formula 1 collection, loved by collectors globally, how should they go about it?
My answer to the baited entreaty definitely didn’t mention a collaboration with Ronnie Fieg of Kith, one of the world’s biggest streetwear fashion labels. Still, here we are: the TAG Heuer Formula 1 is officially back and as colourful as ever.
As the watch industry enters its hype era—in recent years, we’ve seen MoonSwatches, Scuba Fifty Fathoms, and John Mayer G-Shocks—the new Formula 1 x Kith collaboration might be the coolest yet.
Here’s the lowdown: overnight, TAG Heuer, together with Kith, took to socials to unveil a special, limited-edition collection of Formula 1 timepieces, inspired by the original collection from the 1980s. There are 10 new watches, all limited, with some designed on a stainless steel bracelet and some on an upgraded rubber strap; both options nod to the originals.
Seven are exclusive to Kith and its global stores (New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Hawaii, Tokyo, Toronto, and Paris, to be specific), and are made in an abundance of colours. Two are exclusive to TAG Heuer; and one is “shared” between TAG Heuer and Kith—this is a highlight of the collection, in our opinion. A faithful play on the original composite quartz watch from 1986, this model, limited to just 1,350 pieces globally, features the classic black bezel with red accents, a stainless steel bracelet, and that creamy eggshell dial, in all of its vintage-inspired glory. There’s no doubt that this particular model will present as pure nostalgia for those old enough to remember when the original TAG Heuer Formula 1 made its debut.
Of course, throughout the collection, Fieg’s design cues are punctuated: the “TAG” is replaced with “Kith,” forming a contentious new brand name for this specific release, as well as Kith’s slogan, “Just Us.”
Collectors and purists alike will appreciate the dedication to the original Formula 1 collection: features like the 35mm Arnite cases—sourced from the original 80s-era supplier—the form hour hand, a triangle with a dot inside at 12 o’clock, indices that alternate every quarter between shields and dots, and a contrasting minuterie, are all welcomed design specs that make this collaboration so great.
Every TAG Heuer Formula 1 | Kith timepiece will be presented in an eye-catching box that complements the fun and colour theme of Formula 1 but drives home the premium status of this collaboration. On that note, at $2,200 a piece, this isn’t exactly an approachable quartz watch but reflects the exclusive nature of Fieg’s Kith brand and the pieces he designs (largely limited-edition).
So, what do we think? It’s important not to understate the significance of the arrival of the TAG Heuer Formula 1 in 1986, in what would prove integral in setting up the brand for success throughout the 90’s—it was the very first watch collection to have “TAG Heuer” branding, after all—but also in helping to establish a new generation of watch consumer. Like Fieg, many millennial enthusiasts will recall their sentimental ties with the Formula 1, often their first timepiece in their horological journey.
This is as faithful of a reissue as we’ll get from TAG Heuer right now, and budding watch fans should be pleased with the result. To TAG Heuer’s credit, a great deal of research has gone into perfecting and replicating this iconic collection’s proportions, materials, and aesthetic for the modern-day consumer. Sure, it would have been nice to see a full lume dial, a distinguishing feature on some of the original pieces—why this wasn’t done is lost on me—and perhaps a more approachable price point, but there’s no doubt these will become an instant hit in the days to come.
—
The TAG Heuer Formula 1 | Kith collection will be available on Friday, May 3rd, exclusively in-store at select TAG Heuer and Kith locations in Miami, and available starting Monday, May 6th, at select TAG Heuer boutiques, all Kith shops, and online at Kith.com. To see the full collection, visit tagheuer.com
You may also like.
8 Fascinating Facts You Didn’t Know About Aston Martin
The British sports car company is most famous as the vehicle of choice for James Bond, but Aston Martin has an interesting history beyond 007.
Aston Martin will forever be associated with James Bond, ever since everyone’s favourite spy took delivery of his signature silver DB5 in the 1964 film Goldfinger. But there’s a lot more to the history of this famed British sports car brand beyond its association with the fictional British Secret Service agent.
Let’s dive into the long and colourful history of Aston Martin.
The origin of the Aston Martin name
The company that would become Aston Martin started out as a car dealership. In 1912, Englishmen Robert Bamford and Lionel Martin partnered to sell cars, but soon after they decided to build their own models. Their first prototype debuted in 1915, named in honour of Martin, a racing driver, and his favourite racing venue, Aston Hills. Thus, the name Aston Martin was born.
A speed-demon co-founder banned from driving
Aston Martin co-founder Lionel Martin wasn’t just a keen racing driver—he was an all-out speed demon. As a student, Martin won numerous gruelling bicycle racing records, including riding nearly the full width of England in one 22-hour stretch. He competed in motorcycle and sidecar races and automotive hillclimb competitions. It seems he also brought that need for speed to the public roadways: In 1909, having neglected to pay a previous speeding fine, Martin was caught driving 41.5 km/ph in London and was banned from driving for two years—during which he set yet another cross-country bicycle record.
A tractor company takes over
The years after World War I were tumultuous for Aston Martin, with financial difficulties and numerous takeovers. In 1947, Aston Martin went up for sale and was purchased by David Brown Limited, a company that specialised in farm tractors and industrial gears. Sir David Brown, grandson of the company’s founder, was a lifelong car enthusiast and racer, having built his own competition cars while working as an engineer at the family company. The first car built by Aston Martin after this takeover was called the DB1, named after the tractor company (and the man) that had saved the carmaker.
An indirect connection to Bentley
Around the same time that Sir David Brown took over Aston Martin, he purchased another struggling British carmaker, Lagonda. The company was developing a revolutionary twin-cam six-cylinder engine called the LB6, and Sir David wanted the engine for his new line of Aston Martin sports cars. The Lagonda engine had been designed by none other than W.O. Bentley—the man who co-founded Bentley Motors, who had long since been pushed out of the company bearing his name.
The history of the DB Series
Aston Martin built seven vehicles named in honour of owner Sir David Brown: The DB1, DB2, DB3, DB4, DB5, DB6, and the combo-breaker DBS all bore Sir David’s initials. In 1972, Sir David sold the car company, and the new owners ended the DB series of vehicles, but the name was revived in 1993 with the DB7 in honour of Sir David—who himself was given an honorary position at the company that same year.
Bond, James Bond
Of course, the most famous Aston Martin of them all is the DB5. Just over 1,000 examples were built between 1963 and 1965, but millions worldwide know this as the James Bond car. In the books, author Ian Fleming had specified an earlier Aston Martin DB Mark III as Bond’s car. Still, the DB5 was introduced in the 1964 Bond film Goldfinger, equipped with gadgets including machine guns, smoke screens, oil slicks, an ejector seat, and rotating license plates. Bond has driven several Aston Martin models over the years, including a V8 Vantage, a V12 Vanquish, and two DBS models, but the original DB5 will always be considered the quintessential Bond car.
The angular years
Today, the Aston Martin badge is most closely associated with swooping, evocatively curvy car designs, but in the 1970s the company was obsessed with angular, wedge-shaped designs. The trend began in 1976 with the Aston Martin Lagonda, a shockingly unconventional four-door luxury sedan with “folded-paper” body styling and the world’s first all-digital instrument panel. The Lagonda’s styling was further evolved in 1979 with the Bulldog, a radical concept car with gullwing doors and a sharply pointed nose. The Bulldog was meant to become the fastest road car on earth, but the project was abandoned before production could begin.
For Bond’s eyes only
While most of James Bond’s Aston Martins have been commercially available to anyone who could afford one, the DB10 seen in the 2015 film Spectre was exclusive to 007. As Aston Martin executive Marek Reichman explained to Variety, director Sam Mendes, producer Barbara Broccoli, and Bond star Daniel Craig were touring Aston Martin’s design studios when they saw a concept sketch on the wall. The Bond team insisted that this should be 007’s next car, and Aston Martin spent the next six months furiously working to turn the drawing into a real-world car. The DB10 was unveiled during the launch of the film Spectre, and eight of the 10 examples built were featured in the movie, with the remaining two used for promotional appearances.
You may also like.
What Venice’s New Tourist Tax Means for Your Next Trip
The Italian city will now charge visitors an entry fee during peak season.
Visiting the Floating City just got a bit more expensive.
Venice is officially the first metropolis in the world to start implementing a day-trip fee in an effort to help the Italian hot spot combat overtourism during peak season, The Associated Press reported. The new program, which went into effect, requires travellers to cough up roughly €5 (about $AUD8.50) per person before they can explore the city’s canals and historic sites. Back in January, Venice also announced that starting in June, it would cap the size of tourist groups to 25 people and prohibit loudspeakers in the city centre and the islands of Murano, Burano, and Torcello.
“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’ Simone Venturini, the city’s top tourism official, told AP News. “We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”
During this trial phase, the fee only applies to the 29 days deemed the busiest—between April 25 and July 14—and tickets will remain valid from 8:30 am to 4 pm. Visitors under 14 years of age will be allowed in free of charge in addition to guests with hotel reservations. However, the latter must apply online beforehand to request an exemption. Day-trippers can also pre-pay for tickets online via the city’s official tourism site or snap them up in person at the Santa Lucia train station.
“With courage and great humility, we are introducing this system because we want to give a future to Venice and leave this heritage of humanity to future generations,” Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said in a statement on X (formerly known as Twitter) regarding the city’s much-talked-about entry fee.
Despite the mayor’s backing, it’s apparent that residents weren’t totally pleased with the program. The regulation led to protests and riots outside of the train station, The Independent reported. “We are against this measure because it will do nothing to stop overtourism,” resident Cristina Romieri told the outlet. “Moreover, it is such a complex regulation with so many exceptions that it will also be difficult to enforce it.”
While Venice is the first city to carry out the new day-tripper fee, several other European locales have introduced or raised tourist taxes to fend off large crowds and boost the local economy. Most recently, Barcelona increased its city-wide tourist tax. Similarly, you’ll have to pay an extra “climate crisis resilience” tax if you plan on visiting Greece that will fund the country’s disaster recovery projects.
You may also like.
Omega Reveals a New Speedmaster Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics
Your first look at the new Speedmaster Chronoscope, designed in the colour theme of the Paris Olympics.
The starters are on the blocks, and with less than 100 days to go until the Paris 2024 Olympics, luxury Swiss watchmaker Omega was bound to release something spectacular to mark its bragging rights as the official timekeeper for the Summer Games. Enter the new 43mm Speedmaster Chronoscope, available in new colourways—gold, black, and white—in line with the colour theme of the Olympic Games in Paris this July.
So, what do we get in this nicely-wrapped, Olympics-inspired package? Technically, there are four new podium-worthy iterations of the iconic Speedmaster.
The new versions present handsomely in stainless steel or 18K Moonshine Gold—the brand’s proprietary yellow gold known for its enduring shine. The steel version has an anodised aluminium bezel and a stainless steel bracelet or vintage-inspired perforated leather strap. The Moonshine Gold iteration boasts a ceramic bezel; it will most likely appease Speedy collectors, particularly those with an affinity for Omega’s long-standing role as stewards of the Olympic Games.
Notably, each watch bears an attractive white opaline dial; the background to three dark grey timing scales in a 1940s “snail” design. Of course, this Speedmaster Chronoscope is special in its own right. For the most part, the overall look of the Speedmaster has remained true to its 1957 origins. This Speedmaster, however, adopts Omega’s Chronoscope design from 2021, including the storied tachymeter scale, along with a telemeter, and pulsometer scale—essentially, three different measurements on the wrist.
While the technical nature of this timepiece won’t interest some, others will revel in its theatrics. Turn over each timepiece, and instead of a transparent crystal caseback, there is a stamped medallion featuring a mirror-polished Paris 2024 logo, along with “Paris 2024” and the Olympic Rings—a subtle nod to this year’s games.
Powering this Olympiad offering—and ensuring the greatest level of accuracy—is the Co-Axial Master Chronometer Calibre 9908 and 9909, certified by METAS.
A Speedmaster to commemorate the Olympic Games was as sure a bet as Mondo Deplantis winning gold in the men’s pole vault—especially after Omega revealed its Olympic-edition Seamaster Diver 300m “Paris 2024” last year—but they delivered a great addition to the legacy collection, without gimmickry.
However, the all-gold Speedmaster is 85K at the top end of the scale, which is a lot of money for a watch of this stature. By comparison, the immaculate Speedmaster Moonshine gold with a sun-brushed green PVD “step” dial is 15K cheaper, albeit without the Chronoscope complications.
—
The Omega Speedmaster Chronoscope in stainless steel with a leather strap is priced at $15,725; stainless steel with steel bracelet at $16,275; 18k Moonshine Gold on leather strap $54,325; and 18k Moonshine Gold with matching gold bracelet $85,350, available at Omega boutiques now.
Discover the collection here
You may also like.
Here’s What Goes Into Making Jay-Z’s $1,800 Champagne
We put Armand de Brignac Blanc de Noirs Assemblage No. 4 under the microsope.
In our quest to locate the most exclusive and exciting wines for our readers, we usually ask the question, “How many bottles of this were made?” Often, we get a general response based on an annual average, although many Champagne houses simply respond, “We do not wish to communicate our quantities.” As far as we’re concerned, that’s pretty much like pleading the Fifth on the witness stand; yes, you’re not incriminating yourself, but anyone paying attention knows you’re probably guilty of something. In the case of some Champagne houses, that something is making a whole lot of bottles—millions of them—while creating an illusion of rarity.
We received the exact opposite reply regarding Armand de Brignac Blanc de Noirs Assemblage No. 4. Yasmin Allen, the company’s president and CEO, told us only 7,328 bottles would be released of this Pinot Noir offering. It’s good to know that with a sticker price of around $1,800, it’s highly limited, but it still makes one wonder what’s so exceptional about it.
Known by its nickname, Ace of Spades, for its distinctive and decorative metallic packaging, Armand de Brignac is owned by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy and Jay-Z and is produced by Champagne Cattier. Each bottle of Assemblage No. 4 is numbered; a small plate on the back reads “Assemblage Four, [X,XXX]/7,328, Disgorged: 20 April, 2023.” Prior to disgorgement, it spent seven years in the bottle on lees after primary fermentation mostly in stainless steel with a small amount in concrete. That’s the longest of the house’s Champagnes spent on the lees, but Allen says the winemaking team tasted along the way and would have disgorged earlier than planned if they’d felt the time was right.
Chef de cave, Alexandre Cattier, says the wine is sourced from some of the best Premier and Grand Cru Pinot Noir–producing villages in the Champagne region, including Chigny-les-Roses, Verzenay, Rilly-la-Montagne, Verzy, Ludes, Mailly-Champagne, and Ville-sur-Arce in the Aube département. This is considered a multi-vintage expression, using wine from a consecutive trio of vintages—2013, 2014, and 2015—to create an “intense and rich” blend. Seventy percent of the offering is from 2015 (hailed as one of the finest vintages in recent memory), with 15 percent each from the other two years.
This precisely crafted Champagne uses only the tête de cuvée juice, a highly selective extraction process. As Allen points out, “the winemakers solely take the first and freshest portion of the gentle cuvée grape press,” which assures that the finished wine will be the highest quality. Armand de Brignac used grapes from various sites and three different vintages so the final product would reflect the house signature style. This is the fourth release in a series that began with Assemblage No. 1. “Testing different levels of intensity of aromas with the balance of red and dark fruits has been a guiding principle between the Blanc de Noirs that followed,” Allen explains.
The CEO recommends allowing the Assemblage No. 4 to linger in your glass for a while, telling us, “Your palette will go on a journey, evolving from one incredible aroma to the next as the wine warms in your glass where it will open up to an extraordinary length.” We found it to have a gorgeous bouquet of raspberry and Mission fig with hints of river rock; as it opened, notes of toasted almond and just-baked brioche became noticeable. With striking acidity and a vein of minerality, it has luscious nectarine, passion fruit, candied orange peel, and red plum flavors with touches of beeswax and a whiff of baking spices on the enduring finish. We enjoyed our bottle with a roast chicken rubbed with butter and herbes de Provence and savored the final, extremely rare sip with a bit of Stilton. Unfortunately, the pairing possibilities are not infinite with this release; there are only 7,327 more ways to enjoy yours.
