Millet and Pommery
A dining experience
- 2 - 4.30 pm
- 6.15 - 8.45 pm
Tickets
| Lunch: | £160 |
| Dinner: | £195 |
This event is located within Supporters' House, available to House Members & Patrons.
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Join us for a very special dining experience celebrating the current exhibition, 'Millet: Life on the Land' with Champagne Pommery.
Jean-Francois Millet was the foremost painter of French rural life. Marking the 150th anniversary of his death, Supporters' House hosts a private dining experience with Champagne Pommery. Hosted by Martin Dibben, Head of Wine & Champagne at Searcys, and Sara Hicks of Champagne Pommery, the four-course menu draws inspiration from seasonal harvests, French flavours and rare cuvées, telling a story of Madame Pommery and Jean-Francois Millet.
You'll learn about the young widow, Jeanne-Alexandrine Pommery, who quashed rumours of over-extended finances by purchasing Millet's 'The Gleaners'. You'll also enjoy vintage cuvées, rare bottles from the Pommery cave and share inspiration taken from the exhibition with fellow Members.
This will be our first special dining experience within the Private Dining Room, a room dressed in copper and inspired by JMW Turner’s penchant for painting sunsets. The menu, developed by Executive Chef Imma Savinelli, includes goats’ cheese mousse with heritage tomatoes and tarragon, as well as seabass and mussels with cream velouté and parsley oil.
Dietary requirements can be accommodated but must be communicated at least 7 days before the event takes place. Non-alcoholic options are available. Please note you will be sat at a shared table and served individually.
Lunch menu (wine pairings shared closer to the event date)
Cheese Straws with paired glass of Champagne
Starter: Goats’ cheese mousse, heritage tomatoes, tarragon, paired with glass of Champagne
Main: Seabass and mussels, cream velouté, parsley oil, paired with glass of Champagne
Dessert: Apple frangipane tart, crème fraîche, paired with glass of Champagne
Coffee
Dinner menu (wine pairings shared closer to the event date)
Starter: Goats’ cheese mousse, heritage tomatoes, tarragon, paired with glass of Champagne
Fish course: Seabass and mussels, cream velouté, parsley oil, paired with glass of Champagne
Main: Herb crusted loin of lamb, pommes puree, glazed baby carrots, lamb jus, paired with glass of Champagne
Dessert: Apple frangipane tart, crème fraîche, paired with glass of Champagne
Coffee
Madame Pommery
After the death of her husband, the young widow, Jeanne-Alexandrine Pommery took over the running of the wine business. With big plans to make a champagne of ‘joyful lightness’, Madame Pommery began an immense building project at Domaine Pommery. At this neo-Gothic Elizabethan-style castle in the heart of Reims, she requested her vigneron to leave the grapes on the vine longer, delaying harvest and thus sales. This request resulted in the invention of ‘Company patronage’ almost 30 years ahead of the rest of the world. Yet the rumors began. Had Madame Pommery overextended her finances?
To quash these rumours, she heard of a painting for sale in Paris and asked her staff to bid on it anonymously at auction in 1889. Millet's 'The Gleaners' was on sale at the height of his popularity. Madame Pommery purchased the painting for 300,000 Francs, sending the French press into a frenzy at the possible risk that 'The Gleaners' may be lost to France. Madame Pommery then let it be known that she had acquired the painting, silencing the gossip around her financial situation. Upon her death in 1891, she bequeathed the painting to the Louvre for all of France to enjoy. It is now at the Musée D’Orsay, Paris.