The most exclusive club in the world does not exist

There are an endless number of details in the universe of The Rochambeau Club. The website appears to have been designed by Wes Anderson himself: everything is defined to the millimeter in this fictitious club. So much so that you can find a map of the place, read its exclusive restaurant’s menu, see which coaches are available for a tennis lesson, find out the real-time temperature on center court, and various other services typical of a society reserved only for the elite.

One wonders if its creators are tennis fanatics to have created such an aspirational club — a fake one, yes, but it has thousands of followers and enthusiasts who wish to be part of its treasured list of members. “Yes, we play a lot of padel and tennis, but that’s not where the idea came from,” laughs Joe Bullmore, creator, along with Chris Seddon, of The Rochambeau Sports and Racquet Club. “We liked the ambiance, the clear esthetic that you would find in an exclusive sports club... With the elements in place, it’s easy for people to bring to mind what we’re talking about. As we fine-tuned these ingredients, we saw that they fit perfectly. We had Ralph Lauren catalogs from the 1990s in our heads, the preppy style... So if you want to go preppy, why not take it all the way?”

If all this is what it is not, then what on Earth is The Rochambeau Club? Bullmore clarifies: “Chris and I have known each other for a long time and have always had a dream of having our own rosé wine. Being two English guys, it’s true that we don’t have any origins or family ties to rosé, so that could be a problem, but we’re big fans. So we thought it was best to come up with a good, fun, and detailed story for our rosé.” Bullmore, a writer and journalist first and foremost, saw this conceptual gap as an opportunity to create something new. “The rosé market is very saturated, but it’s still a very fun, get-together, celebrate-with-friends drink. People are not snobbish about rosé,” says the creator of the world’s most distinguished fictional club, a society that already has more than 2,000 digital members. The brand has released The Rochambeau Club’s Racquet 2022, a rosé made from syrah, grenache noir, cinsault and vermentino sourced from century-old vines in La Garde-Freinet and developed with Alexis Cornu, an award-winning winemaker specializing in rosés from Provence. The six-bottle case retails for about €130 ($142).

The gambit has worked out well and its creators are preparing a host of collaborations. “We are going to bring out another drink: a kind of beer with a very Riviera twist. We want every product we bring out to be very high quality, and for that we work with experts in each field,” they say. “We also have a collaboration with Métier [the exclusive and very refined British leather handbag brand] with our own wine carrier, and in March next year we will work with a European car manufacturer that we can’t reveal yet, but we are very excited...” explain the club’s creators. “What we do believe is that rosé will always be at the heart of the brand.”

All this does not detract from the fact that there has been some confusion about the club and its existence. “We’ve received some strange responses and comments: people saying they’ve been to the club — which is impossible — creative directors from big brands who wanted to go to the place for a photo shoot, messages along the lines of ‘I’m going to be in Provence, I can’t wait to go!’ A lot of people think it’s real. As far as I know, no one has been there,” laughs Bullmore.

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