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Putting the Pain in Champagne

by Mike Supple
published: 30 Sep 2009       | Comments

Why wait for a reason to celebrate to pop open the good stuff? My favorite time to drink Champagne is on a random night of the week when work was adequate and there are still chores to be done before bed. On Monday, I grabbed a bottle from my stash and threw it in a bucket of ice. The bottle got cold, the cork popped out cleanly, the glasses were full of tiny bubbles and the aromas smelled like toast, cream and fruit.

It sounds like a perfect start to the evening, but unfortunately it all went wrong. There are few things that are more disappointing than popping the cork on a bottle of wine that I just spent a decent chunk of change on only to find out that it's just not good. Leave aside the various flaws that can damage a wine - I mean a bottle that just tastes wrong. I can do all the research, read all the critics, check the history of the winemaker and still end up with something that makes my fiancée say, "Ew. This tastes like beer."

I don't have her aversion to beer - my fridge is stocked with several types at all times - but when it comes to beer, there is one thing I don't do: spend $60 on a single bottle. So why, you might ask, would I do this with wine? Because when I want a little something extra to improve the beginning of my week or to toast a worthwhile accomplishment (or notable failure), there is nothing better than rich, toasty, fruity, bubbly Champagne. And because for those rare occasions when I have spare money to blow on expensive wine, it's worth it.

What happens when I discover I've just wasted a lot of good money on a crappy bottle? I go into the five stages of grief:

1. Denial: "It just doesn't go with this food. Let's leave it on ice until we're done eating."


2. Anger: "Seriously? I could make better Champagne from rotten grape jelly!"


3. Bargaining: "If you focus on the candied apple, lemon and cream flavors when you're drinking it, you can't really taste the bitter part."


4. Depression: "I could have had 4 or 5 other bottles of perfectly good wine instead of this one. There goes any hope for a buzz the rest of the week."


5. Acceptance: "There must be a god because we have frozen orange juice concentrate. Bad Champagne can still make a perfectly good Mimosa."

This doesn't mean I will forever avoid expensive bottles of Champagne - they will just have to remain an infrequent treat. And I will continue to keep notes on everything I drink, because the only thing worse than spending good money on a bad bottle once is doing it twice. Thankfully, there is plenty of fizz out there for a lot less money. Many different regions in the world are producing high quality sparkling wine for a fraction of the price of Champagne - New Zealand, Australia, Germany, the United States, other parts of France - and there are even some solid producers in Champagne that make affordable bubbly (Deutz, Louis Roederer, Mumm and Nicolas Feuillate, to name a few).