Champagne

In my house, I either have Champagne, or I am out of Champagne. So I wanted to write an ode, to describe why I love it. Why it is impossible to be unhappy while drinking Champagne. Alas, I cannot hope to top the words of Terry Theise. So here they are.

From Terry Theise's 2007 Catalogue:

I have a friend who was about to marry when, a week before the wedding, he and his fiance learned of her diagnosis with cancer, a bad cancer, a killer. They married nevertheless, and the eighteen months of their marriage were marked by the disease, its treatment, the endless round of doctors and specialists, and the pathos of her death. She was in her early thirties, and they were each the other’s Great Love. His friends did what we could to rally around him.

Within a week or two after the death, we gathered in one of our homes to cook supper and keep our friend company. He and I had spoken often, of course, and shed many a tear together, but this was my first time seeing him, and so I brought a special wine, a Magnum of Vilmart’s 1991 Coeur de Cuvée. And this is the first thing I want to tell you; what other wine can be at once appropriate for both celebration and consolation? The very sight of the tiny rising bubbles, dancing upward as if to snub their noses at gravity and exploding in a soft wash of foam, are heralds of an unquenchable hope. And so it was; the Champagne itself was enthralling, and I watched my friend be drawn into its suave complexity, and I knew very well that for these few moments he was engrossed in life, free of the ache of his dead. The Champagne almost literally brought him back to life.

What other wine could have done this?
...
That’s why Champagne matters, and why you should care.

Original URL: http://www.skurnikwines.com/msw/documents/2007Champagnecatalog_Champagne2007_working.pdf