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In December 1988, Philippe-Edouard Grardel, then publisher of Emballages Magazine, chanced upon a bottle of Champagne Germain at the Auchan supermarket in Velizy. The bottle was packaged in a blue, white and red plastic sleeve to mark the bicentenary of the French revolution. Common today, this packaging process was then completely new and Philippe-Edouard Grardel bought one of the bottles just for the sleeve, never dreaming for one moment that he had just taken the first step on a path that would take up practically all his spare time for almost four years! |
In February 1989, the bicentennial commemorative bottles began to appear on supermarket shelves and to begin with, Philippe-Edouard Grardel began collecting only the screen-printed ones.
In June 1989, he went to the VINEXPO exhibition in Bordeaux and virtually ransacked the exhibitors’ stands.
Later that same month, he attended the Epernay Trade Fair. One of the exhibitors had thirty or so bottles of champagne on this same theme, so all our intrepid collector had to do was to list the addresses of the growers concerned and approach them individually to obtain the bottles.
| From that moment onwards, he bought all the bottles he could find on his chosen theme: some with labels, some screen-printed and some even hand-painted. |
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Intending to exhibit his expanding collection, he wrote to all the wine growers and winemakers, asking if they would send him two labels for each of the bottles they had produced so that he would be able to replace the originals if they became damaged. Some sent him the requested two, others twenty or more. The result of course was a new and unexpected collection – this time of French Revolution Bicentenary labels!
By the end of November 1989, he had 300 different bottles on the theme and thought the collection complete.
The article did not result in any increase to his collection…. at least to begin with!
End of Act One!
In May 1990, Emballages Magazine had a stand at the ETIQUA 90 trade fair in Dijon, which is where Philippe-Edouard Grardel discovered that there was an Association of Label Collectors. The Association’s Chairman was there and put him in touch with a member who collected, amongst others, labels produced to mark the bicentenary of the French revolution.
Philippe-Edouard Grardel contacted him from his home in Versailles, but since label collector lives in Nice they decided to meet in Lyon.
Philippe-Edouard Grardel’s bottle collection gave the label collector the opportunity to explore new areas of research and vice-versa.
Over a period of some two years, labels from bottles that Philippe-Edouard Grardel did not have were photocopied for reference.
Using these labels, Philippe-Edouard Grardel phoned the wine growers and winemakers concerned to obtain the corresponding bottles and ask if they had produced other labels, either screen-printed or hand-painted.
Many replied that they were out of stock, but a letter accompanied by a copy of the FIGARO MADAME article often resulted in a bottle coming magically to light!
Sometimes, a chance phone call would put him on the track of a collector with a small collection of bottles on the same theme and, amongst those 50 or 60 bottles, Philippe-Edouard Grardel would find perhaps one or two previously unknown to him and which the owner could be persuaded to swap for Philippe-Edouard’s duplicates.
Often, just getting hold of one or two bottles would involve long car or train journeys, and sometimes even flights… and a great deal of careful persuasion to obtain an exceptionally rare bottle… which is how he succeeded in acquiring a never-marketed prototype produced by Yvon MAU.
After 4 years, his perseverance had brought together some 900 different bottles from a 100 ml to an 18-litre, all full and all labelled, screen-printed or hand-painted.
The collection now boasts bottles from all of France’s wine-growing regions, including Bordeaux, Burgundy, Côtes du Rhône, Champagne, Alsace, Languedoc-Roussillon, Arbois, Jura and South-Western France.
It also includes many aperitifs, liqueurs and other alcoholic drinks, from Port, whisky and TAILLEVENT cognac to beer.
The collection also features a hundred or so drink-related bicentenary commemorative items, such as glasses, water jugs, ice buckets, wine tasting cups, corkscrews and mats. |
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Philippe-Edouard Grardel is now seeking to complete his collection or sell it in its entirety to an equally passionate collector who might use it as part of a Museum or – and why not? – as a feature in a restaurant!