A passionate freediver with over fifteen years expertise, Panaïotis’ demise throughout a coaching train in Rochefontaine, Belgium was reported by diving membership Reims Palmes Apnée on Sunday. In a press release, Maison Ruinart remembered a ‘good oenologist and a person of nice heat and attentiveness’, who ’embodied the spirit of Champagne with each magnificence and humility worldwide’.
Panaïotis joined Ruinart as chef de collapse 2007 after 12 years within the winemaking staff at Veuve Clicquot, earlier than which he accomplished stints with the technical staff on the CIVC (Champagne’s governing physique) in addition to in California. He rapidly made a mark at Ruinart, honing the analysis the Maison was doing on cork tirage – or bottling long-ageing cuvées beneath cork somewhat than crown caps for the secondary fermentation – culminating within the first full bottling of a Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs beneath cork in 2010.
The ensuing wine has extensively been seen as probably the most exceptional Champagne releases of the previous decade; main Champagne critic and creator Essi Avellan MW to jot down that Panaïotis ‘lifted this already superlative cuvée to the subsequent stage’, additionally reporting that he believed ‘the perfect Dom Ruinarts are nonetheless within the cellars’.
Panaïotis’ technical aptitude prolonged past the realms of the cellar, although. Visits to Ruinart would usually delve into meticulous analysis on all the things from classic climate patterns to the consequences of hedgerows and agroforestry on the grapes, soils and microclimate of Ruinart’s ‘laboratory’ winery within the village of Taissy. Ever the empiricist, Panaïotis was at all times clear-minded about his commitments: ‘We don’t do these items simply to make higher wine,’ he mentioned throughout a go to to the property in 2024. ‘We do it for the land of Champagne, and for the planet.’
His open-mindedness led to the event of Ruinart’s extremely imaginative ‘Blanc Singulier’ which, in Panaïotis’ phrases, ‘tries to reply the query of what Blanc de Blancs may appear like sooner or later’. Certainly it’s Panaïotis’ mastery of Chardonnay, the grape of his grandparents’ village in Villers-Marmery on the Montagne de Reims, that many within the area will keep in mind him for by way of his work on the ever-popular Ruinart Blanc de Blancs and Dom Ruinart cuvées.
‘Regardless of the subject, he was inquisitive, open-minded, easy and modest regardless of his immense information,’ mentioned good friend and fellow Chardonnay specialist Rodolphe Péters of Champagne Petérs in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, remembering ‘a honest good friend who many people are mourning at the moment’.
Panaïotis straddled the worlds of cellar technician and spokesperson with a uncommon adeptness, and was ‘one in all Champagne’s all-time greatest communicators’ based on Avellan. Julia Scavo, winner of the Ruinart Sommelier Problem in 2018, remembered Panaïotis as a ‘luminary and a information’ in her discovery of the area, a ‘storyteller and mentor, rendering his work and analysis clear to the mentees he formed’.
‘Fred was good, clearly,’ mentioned Christian Holthausen of Westbrook Advertising Companions, who labored with Panaïotis at Veuve Clicquot earlier than commencing a protracted private {and professional} friendship. ‘He would organise these personal tastings the place among the absolute best winemakers in Champagne would come to style wines from different components of the world. I used to be very fortunate to be included, and I’m not even a winemaker! Fred simply needed us to study, and to be open to the surface world. That’s uncommon in Champagne.’
Péters echoed the sentiment. ‘He mixed the widest potential wine tradition with a fantastic analytical finesse’, paying tribute to ‘a fantastic instructor and a marvellous commonplace bearer’ for Ruinart and Champagne as an entire.
‘However Fred was rather more than that,’ Péters recalled. ‘Above all, he was a free soul.’
