When people talk about modern Ruinart, there’s no getting around one name: Frédéric Panaïotis. From 2007 until his sudden passing in June 2025, he guided the house with both precision and passion. Diving was his great love outside of wine, and it was during one of those dives that we lost him — a shock to the Champagne world.
What made Frédéric special wasn’t just technical brilliance. He was a wine lover in the broadest sense, someone who drank widely from Burgundy, Piedmont, Bordeaux, and beyond. That curiosity fed into his choices at Ruinart, pushing him toward a reductive style that brought freshness and energy without harsh edges. You can taste it in the flagship cuvées: Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs and Dom Ruinart Rosé. They carry that signature smoky, flinty touch from reduction, layered with the depth of long lees aging — increasingly under cork.
Ruinart today farms 200 hectares of vines. They’re not organic, but the shift in recent years is clear: no herbicides since 2020, cover crops on over 60 hectares, shallow soil work instead of deep plowing, plus hedgerows and trees returning to the landscape to restore biodiversity. Step by step, the vineyards are moving closer to balance.
In the cellar, everything goes into stainless steel, with non-vintage cuvées spending around three months on lees, and vintage wines closer to eight months. Full malolactic fermentation is the rule. And when it comes to Dom Ruinart, the final call is made at tasting — these days pulling from both grand cru and premier cru fruit.
Above those famous chalk cellars in Reims, the house also opened a new visitor space in 2024. Guests can taste older vintages from the La Réserve program there — a rare chance to see how Ruinart ages. The style overall? For the entry cuvées, it’s generous and fruit-forward Chardonnay. As you climb toward Dom Ruinart, tension builds, the reductive edge sharpens, and the wines show their long-haul character. The Rosé in particular is a wine to follow for years.
Patience is part of the game here. Take the upcoming releases: the 2015 Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs and 2013 Dom Ruinart Rosé, set for 2026. That’s more than a decade after harvest, meaning we’ll be drinking Frédéric’s wines for years to come. His legacy is very much alive in every bottle.
And since we’re talking Ruinart — a little tip between friends: we’ve got one of the best prices on R de Ruinart Brut in the European market right now. If you’ve ever thought about stocking up, this is the moment.