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.