I have had a few inquiries around this holiday season regarding one of my favorite tipples—champagne. I love this drink to celebrate a special day or occasion but I honestly can find any excuse to drink a glass of champagne. I’m writing from France, where you’ll gladly be served a coupe de champagne before dinner in your favorite restaurant. Nothing more special than your next meal! Here it is all very civilized, affordable, and not considered pretentious! The piece below was written by Natty Adams for the magazine in the spring 2021 issue. This has lots of good intel and I thought it would be worthwhile revisiting it. Kick off your dry January here…it may give you something to look forward to!
DEMYSTIFYING CHAMPAGNE
By Natty Adams
It is an indisputable fact that the opening of a bottle of champagne—whether by conventional uncorking, sabrage, Formula 1-style shake-n-spray, or smashing against the hull of a ship—is the perfect way to mark a moment of celebration. What is more often unrecognized, at least outside of France, is that champagne itself is as much a cause for celebration as it is the hallmark of one. That is to say, any moment can be made a special occasion with the pop of a cork.
If you are someone who only drinks champagne at weddings, galas, and the stroke of the New Year, you are probably missing some of its fundamental qualities, because although it undoubtedly enhances those events, the wine is secondary to the moment - especially if you’re preoccupied looking for someone to kiss when the clock strikes twelve. And to be perfectly honest, unless you are somewhere quite fancy, the bigger the event usually means the cheaper the champagne. That’s not to say that price always indicates quality, but that a rather narrow scope of brands fall within that window, so you probably won’t have tasted many kinds, much less compared different ones in a single sitting.
Many people think that champagne is special because it is expensive. It is in fact exactly the opposite: champagne is more expensive than other wines because it is so special, because of the unprecedented effort and difficulty required to make it - a process of which many people grudgingly forking over a few twenty dollar bills for a single bottle to bring to a party are unaware.