CHIGNY LES ROSES, France (Dow Jones)--Jean-Jacques Cattier has tried for more than 20 years to sell his champagne in the U.S., but with only limited success.

"We've never been able to find an importer who really worked out well," said Cattier, 62, sitting in the lobby of his modern-looking winery, located on a steep hillside overlooking Reims, the Champagne region's capital.

But after one of his wines briefly appeared in a flashy music video by influential rapper Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, Cattier has received more publicity in two weeks than he has in two decades.

"The attention that we've gotten is such a surprise," Cattier said. "Japan, Australia, Denmark... The secretary down at the Chigny village hall called me in a panic. she said 'I don't understand, I'm getting so many e-mails about Armand de Brignac.'"

"Armand de Brignac" is a sort-of-old name for a new champagne dreamed up by a drinks importer from New York, Brett Berish. Berish, in a move timed perfectly to capitalize on Jay-Z's high-profile boycott of his previous favorite bubbly, Louis Roederer's Cristal, came to Cattier and struck a deal to import Cattier champagne under the Armand de Brignac brand name.

The sudden interest in his wine, which Cattier said has "just dropped down on our heads," speaks to the power of branding and image in the luxury goods business.

"To launch a champagne in the U.S. you either need three or four centuries of history, or have a big rapper behind you," said Emeric Sauty de Chalon, the head of one of France's leading online wine retailers, 1855.com.

"This is another example of how champagne makers are the most amazing brand builders in the wine industry," he said.

Jay-Z caused a stir in the staid world of champagne making earlier this year, when he announced his boycott of the Cristal brand. The move came in response to comments Roederer boss Frederic Rouzaud made about Cristal's popularity among rappers, when he remarked that he can't forbid them from buying it.

In his new video, Jay-Z waves away a bottle of Cristal while seated at a Monte Carlo card table, then nods in approval as the server presents a gleaming gold bottle of Armand de Brignac with a raised-pewter logo in the shape of the ace of spades. The bottle alone costs EUR5 to make, according to Cattier.


Deal Or No Deal?

How the bottle got into the Jay-Z video for "Show Me What You Got" is a source of some mystery. Speculation raged in some quarters of the media and on hip-hob Web sites about a product-placement deal between Berish and Jay-Z, in part because Berish's Sovereign Brands is behind 3 vodka, a premium brand whose marketing has benefited from its association with another rapper.

In a press release issued days after the video began airing in mid-October, Berish denied that it's a case of product placement "as Armand de Brignac and Jay-Z have not entered into any agreement, sponsorship or otherwise."

In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, Berish said Jay-Z heard about the champagne through a common friend, asked for a case to be sent to him in Monaco and liked it so much he decided to feature it in his video. "It completely took us by surprise," Berish said.

According to Cattier, the importers told him they "had connections in the rap world" who would help launch the champagne in the U.S.

Of the 20.7 million bottles of champagne sold there each year, 1.8 million are premium brands, said Brigitte Batonnet of CIVC, the French association of champagne growers. That makes the U.S. the world's top consumer of premium champagnes, which include brands such as Cristal and LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton's (12101.FR) Dom Perignon.

The "De Brignac" brand name was registered by Cattier's mother, sometime in the late 1940s or early '50s, the winemaker said. "She needed to come up with a name, and it was the name of a character in a novel she was reading so she chose that." But the brand was never developed and the family forgot about it.

When Berish came looking for champagne brands available to develop in the U.S., Cattier said, he remembered the unused name. CIVC, which regulates champagne names, said the old name could be dusted off and reused only if a first name was added in order to distinguish it.

"We tried a few names and finally came up with Armand," Cattier said. "It sounded kind of noble."

He signed over worldwide rights to the name to Sovereign Brands.

Even in a good year Champagne Cattier sells under 20,000 bottles of champagne in the U.S., a fraction of the winemaker's total production of about 1 million bottles.

Berish said initial plans were to import 500 cases, or only 6,000 bottles, but those plans are now likely to change. "There's no way we can meet the demand," he said. "I'll take everything Cattier can supply us with."

For his part, Cattier said he could supply between 100,000 and 200,000 bottles of the wine.

Cattier's single-vineyard Clos du Moulin champagne, which was once served on the Concorde, retails for around EUR50 a bottle in France. Armand de Brignac, which Cattier says doesn't taste radically different, will retail for $300 a bottle, a spokesman for Berish's company, Sovereign Brands, said.

Clos du Moulin "is a good champagne, it's a connoisseur's wine," said 1855.com's Sauty de Chalon, but not $300-a-bottle good.

By comparison, Cristal retails for around $500, and Dom Perignon for around $100.

"That's a very aggressive strategy, pricing your champagne at three times the price of Dom Perignon," Sauty de Chalon said.

The winery was founded by Cattier's grandfather after World War I, but Cattier says he's traced the family's winemaking roots to an ancestor who started making champagne for his own personal consumption as far back as 1763. In the winery's entryway is an enlarged photograph of Cattier seated with French soccer legend Michel Platini, who has ordered 100 bottles of Cattier wine for his son's wedding this month.

Cattier's own musical tastes run more towards the Beatles, and he had never heard of the multiple Grammy winner Jay-Z before word of the Cristal boycott did the rounds of the village.

He calls that incident "unfortunate," and seems amazed to find himself thrust into the spotlight.

"I would have never imagined a few months ago that we'd become part of this mysterious and exclusive rap world. Jay-Z is a remarkable man. I'd like to invite him here to visit the winery."