Blaine Ashley, founder of New York Champagne Week and the Fizz is Female, recounts her journey into the world of Champagne and provides an insider’s look into the most sought-after exclusive tasting events.
How did you find yourself in Champagne, and how did Champagne Week come to be?
Being born and brought up in east Oahu, Hawaii, I was surrounded by a modest luxury lifestyle. I worked as a head hostess at the famous beachfront French restaurant Michele’s at just 19. Michele’s was famous for its stunning nightly sunsets and for welcoming guests celebrating special occasions. I recall countless sunset proposals, anniversaries and milestone birthdays during my time there, to which countless bottles of Champagne were popped.
This is what piqued my mild obsession with Champagne and premium wine.
In my 20s, I was ushered into the boutique-hotel world and created event experiences for VIP customers, which then led me to be introduced to luxury lifestyle publications such as Modern Luxury and Haute Living, for both of which I was a city editor and doubled as a luxury-event host/producer.
By leveraging the connections I made at the luxury publications and the hospitality space in Hawaii, I was able to transition to New York City in 2010 and start a wine and spirits content and event business. Bubbles flowed and I began connecting with more and more grower Champagne producers that wanted to expand their footprint in NYC.
I attended one of the largest wine expos in the summer of 2013 — Vin Expo, which is arguably the size of three football fields. It was there that I had my "aha!" moment. In my hotel lobby on the first day of the expo, I made friends with a sommelier who was opening a Champagne bar at an opera house in Sweden. He asked if I wanted to walk the expo with him but under one condition: We could only taste Champagne.
Over the course of three days and copious amounts of Champagne, I met more and more producers, many of whom I’d never heard of, yet were thirsting for exposure in the U.S. — namely the New York market. And in the middle of that huge event attended by thousands of producers, I announced that I would launch New York Champagne Week.
This was June 2013, and the first New York Champagne Week production popped off that November.
You work with top C-suite women for customized beverage events. Tell us about that.
New York Champagne Week began as a complimentary event for food and beverage and hospitality members and the media and continued this way for the first seven years. I was eager to expand to a consumer audience, yet was adamant that it be an organic process. In November 2019, UBS reached out to me through a referral to see if I’d be interested in coordinating an experience for their ultra-high-net-worth female clientele in February 2020. The event was a big success and would lead to more opportunities, but then the pandemic struck.
Something interesting happened pretty early on. Many of the powerful women in that room began reaching out to me to see if I could segue their planned in-person events to a virtual experience — and therein, a full-blown New York Champagne Week virtual experience was born. We did approximately 70 virtual event experiences in a year for the likes of UBS, J.P. Morgan, 100 Women in Finance, Google, OpenView, Gartner, CBS, MTV and more.
It took extreme coordination with vendor partners to ensure that items like caviar and Champagne could be shipped across the world to bring together people for a memorable experience.
Champagne & Caviar and Fromage & FIZZ were both extremely booked, while Oyster Shucking & Champagne might’ve been our most boundary-pushing and inventive event. All three remain available for virtual and in-person bookings.
What are your core focus markets?
Our born-and-bred base of New York City, the Hamptons, the North Fork of Long Island, Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, Savannah and … drumroll for our wild card — Birmingham, Alabama!
We’ve had great success in Birmingham due to one of our regular customers, who happens to be a hotelier and attorney there. She owns two hotels in Birmingham and one in Selma. This particular client attended a virtual event of mine in March 2021, then brought a group of her attorney colleagues to New York Champagne Week that November.
Give us an example of a customized event that you create.
One of my more memorable recent events was in collaboration with the Princess Grace Foundation. We took over the Towers at the Waldorf Astoria before it reopened, welcoming guests with magnums of Champagne Pol Roger White Label before they made their way through a guided tour of the space and eventually landed in a two-bedroom penthouse suite to enjoy vintage bottles of Pol Roger alongside a caviar bump bar and a jewelry trunk show.
What is your latest Champagne obsession?
I’m continually on the hunt for new and exciting grower Champagnes. I’m also a big fan of Pinot Meunier-dominant Champagnes. Long considered Champagne’s workhorse grape, I like to refer to it as la petite bête or the tiny beast. Pinot Meunier has been stepping into the spotlight for the past few years with its charming, funky and fun personality and with its robust profile of flavors, from dark fruits — such as blackberries, cassis and black cherries — to bright red fruits including raspberries and sweet cherries, as well as the scent of roses, lavender, truffles and mushrooms.
What’s the most expensive Champagne you’ve ever tasted?
There’s a great possibility that I’ve tasted many Champagnes that I didn’t realize were the price tag they were. The perks of being in the industry!
I’d have to say a 1999 magnum of Champagne Salon Cuvee “S” Blanc de Blancs Brut that went for $7,000, and I’d be remiss not to mention one of the most memorable bottles I’ve ever enjoyed — a 1982 magnum of Krug that went for approximately $4,000. I enjoyed the latter with incredible people on the beach at sunset in Montauk over the Fourth of July, making the Champagne experience pretty priceless.
What kind of access can you get to new-release Champagnes for VIPs?
I stay in constant contact with the Champagne representatives to stay on the cusp of what’s new and what’s soon to be released to get them in front of my VIP customers. I often release exclusive opportunities to my top enthusiasts to give them first dibs to these experiences. It’s a dual effort between the Champagnes communicating with me and my curating the perfect customer base for that Champagne. I pride myself on really getting to know my customer.
Demystifying family office insurance
By CHARMAINE TANG and RICHARD WOLKOWITZ
Ben Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Meetings of family office ownership, boards, committees, leadership and management are usually rich in substantive discussion and complex technical and personal topics. These conversations often require a pivot from the rational to the irrational, all while managing a great deal of interpersonal dynamics and family needs.
The engagement, focus, intensity and curiosity among participants is palpable. And with topics that are deeply impactful and meaningful to the family, meetings tend to run long, and “parking lot” conversations may continue thereafter. Without the meeting’s leader (i.e., the chair) diligently managing conversations through a tight agenda, meetings often exceed the prescribed time.
And what is the quickest way to end such a meeting, suck the oxygen out of the family office meeting or stymie great family office conversation and dialogue?
Answer: Discussion that pertains to “insurance” or “risk mitigation.”
THE WHY: PROBLEMS/CHALLENGES?
The lack of interest, energy and curiosity surrounding insurance or risk management occurs through a lack of understanding about the following:
- Purpose
- Underestimating threats, risks and vulnerabilities
- Consequences of a breach, claim or being “underinsured”
- The value of the coverage(s)
- The company is on “cruise control,” and there exists a lack of attention and complacency
- “Chasing a ghost” — dismissive thinking that “this won’t happen to us”
- The language contained in policy coverages, declarations, updates and exclusions and the probability that a possible claim is vague, amorphous or intangible
- Inability to control costs and helplessness — never-ending, year-over-year premium increases due to macro issues (i.e., industry sector, economy, weather, geography, geopolitical, etc.), even if your personal experience history has been limited or has no claims
- Lack of discipline or desire to review more than annually, at renewal
- Inexperienced, wrong or “finger-pointing” internal employees/external advisers reviewing the matters
- Time rush — discussing right before the renewal period with urgency as coverage is expiring
- Blurred boundaries with family and structure issues — business versus personal, which house (generation, branch, family, household, individual) is responsible to manage or has exposure (this challenge is more confusing in an embedded family office structure)
- Complexity of the types of matters converging simultaneously at renewal, only annually, and usually with short time to discuss business lines (especially if in many industry sectors, regulatory compliance requirements, and banking covenant requirements), personal lines, cybersecurity, life, flood, earthquake, workers’ compensation, board, trustee, employment, medical, disability, representation and warranty coverages, real estate, force majeure, etc.
- Distinct and unique types of family office coverage — exotic travel destinations, security, kidnap and ransom, social engineering, reputation, estates, legacy properties, collections (often rare and unique), aviation, marine, terrorism, etc. — and layered with intertwined, international jurisdictional complexities
- Rushing to the conclusion without a detailed analysis — all of the complexity concerning risk mitigation eventually boils down to coverage need(s), premium mitigation and balancing deductibles
- Meaningless review of voluminous pages of nonnegotiable boilerplate; tiny, legalese print contained in policies, riders, declarations, exclusions (because insurance providers are excellent at mitigating and eliminating risk against themselves)
- Lack of trust between the client and the industry
- Lack of routine communication between the broker and client
- Lack of broker proactiveness (sometimes, laziness), and viewing the premium payments as a secure annuity
- Endless and uncoordinated premium payment invoices with mismatched maturity dates
One of the biggest pain points for family offices tends to be communication issues stemming from insurance, risk management and threat assessments. This communication breakdown often causes misclassification of insurance coverage, which can lead to gaps and overlapping coverages — “underinsurance” vs. “overinsurance” scenarios — neither of which are good. Therefore, the family and its assets are not fully protected, or they are overpaying for unnecessary coverage.
THE HOW: SOLUTIONS
With most issues, proactive open, honest, timely and comprehensive communication is the solution.
"The vast majority of issues, whether in your corporate life or with your family, are communication issues. This increases to about 99.9% when you’re in a family office because often those two worlds have come together," said Bobby Hotaling, founder of Hotaling Insurance Services. Hotaling believes that when it comes to the complexity of family offices, there needs to be a cadence for establishing a consistent dialogue between the family office team members and the risk manager.
The frequency with which these families purchase/sell assets and move money can also be problematic for risk management. The velocity of transactions — such as buying artwork, collecting rare cars and selling/purchasing homes — can be a challenge to maintain. Without consistent tracking and frequent review of coverages, there is significant risk.
"We typically have a quarterly standing call with our clients to review any changes and conduct a check-in," said Dan DiLella, managing partner at Hotaling Insurance Services. "Our general guideline updates are meant to inform us if you acquire or sell anything of significant value. These quarterly meetings can help mitigate many potential concerns."
Hotaling and DiLella walked us through a case study where communication and complexity came into play: A robust Midwest generation-three family with principals in their late 50s were using a very reputable insurance firm as their broker. It was only their third year with this firm. In the past seven years, they have changed brokers twice due to the acquisition of their previous broker and then poor service with the next one.
“Whenever we first meet a family, we always begin with an audit of plans in place. This is to review the language of the contracts and ensure they match with what is going on with reality," said Hotaling. So, this meeting began with a focus on analysis and an in-depth dialogue with the family office.
The findings were stark. Two ranches had commercial operations on them but were insured only for personal risk. One ranch with a few operations happening had zero coverage or no mention at all in the policies. One home with $15 million in artwork carried no insurance. The insurance did not renew three years prior and was not caught. Another subset of art was underinsured due to lack of appraisal. A watch collection valued over $3 million was insured for a fraction of that. Plus, a collection of cars was wildly underinsured.
“Situations like this are common," DiLella explained. "Broker A initially wins the business, but then Broker B comes in later, finding a way to save money by switching carriers, so the family moves their business. However, Broker B is unaware that Broker A did not properly ensure a specific part of the plan, leading Broker B to build on a faulty foundation. This issue compounds over time until it is either caught or a claim is filed and goes unpaid."
CHECKLIST OF TO-DOS
- Be proactive, not reactive
- Governance — create separate time and space (perhaps a formal risk management committee) to discuss and analyze; establish a cadence of communication, conduct cursory review and deep audit meetings; assemble the right technical and knowledgeable people (family, nonfamily, internal employees and external advisers)
- Understanding the structure of your family office could be improved or is causing potential exposure that can be either mitigated or eliminated
- Transparency — provide your broker with your financial statements, strategic business and family plans, list of business and personal assets, and require a physical inspection of sites/assets
- Establish expectations for your broker
- Update immediately and review and audit quarterly — establish a culture that is sensitive to risk mitigation and threat assessments — appoint someone in the organization to be responsible and accountable for knowing what is happening and to update transactions and incidents immediately
- Every three years, conduct an RFP for services to keep the current broker alert and obtain second set of eyes and opinions
- Align renewal, maturity and premium payments so that it eases the burden on your family/staff in order to have a clearer picture of coverages, as well as consideration of gaps and needs
- Create “risk prevention” key performance indicators in your organization with incentives (both economic and noneconomic) to drive a culture of importance, awareness, safety, inclusiveness and teamwork.
- Create a cadence of training and education that supports a culture of importance and awareness
When it comes to complex multigenerational families, talk of insurance just doesn’t capture the interest or attention required, unfortunately. What is required for the complexity of these dynastic multigenerational families is nonstop threat-risk assessments, management and mitigation (or elimination).
As with many things in life, communication is key. Order of operation is key. Governance works and brings this all together.
In the family office world, ensuring that your risks, threats and exposures are proactively assessed and managed in an ever-changing and complex environment requires focus, prioritization, understanding the fundamentals, a fully invested client-broker relationship, and attention by the right substantive people to discuss at the right cadence.
In other words, an ounce of prevention is through governance.