Is it PEEP-UR or P-P?
Is it Hide-Seek or more like Ed-Seek?
I am not looking for American or British pronounciation. I want to know authentic french.
I understood it as P-P Ed-Seek.
It’s a German name. Not sure the French pronunciation is any more relevant that the Brit or US version
I use this tool when trying to find the correct pronunciations…
pee-pair eyed-zeek, at least to the French.
Yes but since it is Champagne I want to know how French pronounce it.
A propos of not much - I recently went to the Taittinger house in Reims. They start the tour with a brief promotional film about the history of the winery and the caves. We saw the English version, and the narrator kept talking about the Tat-en-jay family but then the Tat-in-jer Champagne. Very odd.
What’s with all the German names for Champagne houses? Krug, Mumm, Bollinger, Heidsieck, Deutz, etc.
Germans liked sparklers before the French
Interesting read
That’s interesting! Never thought about. Thanks. A completely different story than Alsace, which was German-speaking through most of its history. No surprise that the producers there have names like Zind-Humbrecht, Schlumberger, Weinbach, Trimbach, etc.
Pee-peh(r) Ayd-seek … (like (h)ide without “h”)
French cannot pronounce the “H” in Heid… so it´s definitely left out.
Usually the ending -er is pronounced -eh, but I´ve heard some pronouncing the final “r” very softly …
A good suggestion from the excellent Bellucci book about wine pronunciations is that you think, but don’t say, the r in Piper. Having the thought of the r sound in your head as you say “peh” helps you strike a relatively better balance in the way a French speaker would pronounce it.
Yes, hard to notate exactly how the ‘r’ would sound at the end of Piper, in the French accent, as it’s more of a throat utterance than a letter
As a linguist, I find this sentence rather nonsensical.
Otto, who would be more qualified than Mr. French to help us pronounce something in French? Actually I find his description fairly accurate even though hearing the word pronounced after his description would help bring home his point. Cheers. -Jim
Oh, but I did not say a single word about whether the description was correct or not. My comment was only about the remark on throat utterance and letter.
Todd’s description on the pronunciation of “Piper” sounds quite accurate, in fact.
Interesting way to put it. I only have college level French, but always thought of French as only half-pronouncing many letters. Particularly when compared to the firmer pronunciations common in Germanic languages, but also more so than the other Romance languages.
Fair enough, though I was trying to “pronounce” my first comment with my tongue placed firmly in my cheek. Cheers.
The problem is that usually there likely is no standard Brit or US version, while in French there is likely a “correct answer”. In this case, I assume there may be a common US version (Pipe-er Hide-Sick), just because Piper is an actual English word, and Heidsieck seems to only have a couple of possible phonetic possibilities in English). Most Brits and Americans just do their best to pronounce a name based on typical English phonetics, which may result in various different pronunciations. Some may have a limited knowledge of French pronunciation rules, so for example may go with the “silent H” at the beginning of Heidseick. Some may say “Hide-sick”, some “Hide-Seek” and others “Heed-Seek”. (I know someone who says “Cotey-Rotey”, but that doesn’t make it the “US version” of Cote Rotie)…
Chef de caves de Piper Heidsieck
I heard Peepuhr Ide seek or maybe zeek
Not really proud to say this, but I would bet a good bottle that most French people who don’t actually know how it is pronounced would butcher it. You could go from “Pee-perrr Hide-sickkkkk” to “Piii-pair Hid-sec” depending on the folks.
Edit: so the good news is you can’t really be wrong when talking about this wine around French people! 
Alain
