The Beauties of the Bubbly

One would not drink gin out of a lady's slipper or christen a ship with a bottle of Scotch.

Such occasions, and indeed all occasions when high gaiety and celebration set the tone, require a special drink; a true nectar with pedigree, swank and swagger; a brilliant drink; a bravura drink; a drink that is what the cadenza is in music, what white tie is in dress, what the diamond is among stones. Clearly indicated is something more than just a drink, something that is also a symbol. And if ever a single symbol immediately and unmistakably meant luxurious living, that symbol is the scintillant wine known variously as nosetickler, gigglewater, fizz, the bubbly, and sometimes even as champagne.

Gladstone always drank a quart of it with his dinner. It flows freely through every volume of Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga. Wine expert Alexis Lichine calls it the "most famous wine of all" and Alec Waugh considers it "delightful, fascinating" and "in many ways the greatest of all wines." "So fresh, so wholesome, so gay to look at, so rejuvenating [Waugh goes on]; exquisite in color and flavor, with such a sharp sting upon the palate; how it warms the blood and lightens the spirit. How quickly a party gets going under its influence. It is nearly as effective as a dry martini and how much pleasanter to taste; how much more beneficent in its effects." The Restoration playwright Farquhar, in his Constant Couple, wrote "Malice ne'er spoke in generous Champaign." During the same epoch, Matthew Prior versified thus: "By nerves about our palates placed,/ She likewise judges of the taste,/ Else (dismal thought) our warlike men/ Might drink thick Port for fine Champagne." Thomas Walker, back in 1835, said "its exhilarating quality serves to start the guests, after which they seldom flag." Lord Chesterfield's favorite toast is said to have been: "Give me Champaign and fill it to the brim,/ I'll toast in bumpers every lovely limb!" Etherege sang the praises of its restorative powers: "It quickly recovers/ Poor languishing lovers." The last line of Martin Armstrong's poem, Fine Champagne, is particularly felicitous: "The Essence of the Essence of the Grape." It is the drink Anthony Eden sips, to the accompaniment of little biscuits, during his midday "coffee" break. It was the only fluid Beau Brummel would condescend to use as a cleaner for his boots. Movie queens have rinsed their golden tresses with it, courtesans have bathed their sleek pelts in it, Good King Wenceslaus (of Christmas carol fame) neglected to sign a treaty because of one chalice too much of it; Hilaire Belloc equated it with Privilege, Christopher Isherwood likened it to Religion, and as for Robert Smith Surtees – "Champagne," he hiccoughed, "certainly gives one werry gentlemanly ideas."

It certainly does. And yet, for all that, it is a beverage that is well on its way to becoming a popular favorite, for excellent champagne is now within the reach of the happy many instead of the happy few. In champagne-tasting sessions held this past summer, Playboy discovered that a champagne need not necessarily be vintage or even imported to be superlatively good drinking. But vintage champagnes are still the most deeply satisfying, if only psychologically, and it's not a bad idea at all to pamper yourself and your friends once in a while – especially during this festive season – and enjoy the elegance and the expansive feeling that goes hand in hand with classic French champagne, its lore, its romance, its patina of connotations, its unparalleled flavor, tingle and chatoyance. For this reason, let's get the whole occult subject of vintages out of the way right now, in one short, simple paragraph:

Great age does not mean great champagne. After about ten years, the bubbly will lose its zest in the bottle, so look askance at a 1950 vintage or earlier. The great vintage year now available is 1953. 1952 is also excellent and is obtainable, but not quite as obtainable as '53. 1959 – not yet available, of course – promises to be the vintage of the century, champagne-wise, so keep an eye peeled for it. A happy combination of favorables in France during that year (little rain, no hail and a continuous hot sun) are the reasons. When in doubt, take the advice of your liquor dealer on the subject of vintages; if you doubt his know-how, remember this home truth: although great age doesn't mean great gigglewater, great price usually does. In the case of imports, certainly, you pay for what you get in champagne, and the more it costs, the better it usually (continued on page 98) Beauties of the Bubbly(continued from page 40) is class dismissed.

The whole sec, Brut, Extra Dry scene is a confuser, probably because although sec is the French word for "dry," champagne labeled with that word is actually semi-sweet. Compounding the confusion, Extra Dry is not the driest. Here's the way it goes: Brut is an extremely dry champagne that may taste almost sour to a virgin palate; Extra Dry is not quite as dry as that; Sec is rather sweet, but not cloyingly so. You may also run across Doux. This is very, very sweet and is not to our taste. The most popular types are those two middle-of-the-roaders, Extra Dry and sec. Sample them all and drink the type that suits your taste best, and for the love of Bacchus don't become a victim of that champagne snobbery that says the drier it is the more in it is. We like Extra Dry and occasionally sec, depending upon our mood, but if you prefer Doux, by all means drink it, and if the Sahara-dry-ness of Brut hits the spot for you, drink that. Pink champagne? Why not? It's pretty to look at, and it has a distinctive flavor, a "pink" flavor or fruitiness.

No other drink comes in bottles of such magnificently graduated size. There are ten: the split (6-1/2 ozs.), the pint (13 ozs.), the fifth (26 ozs.), the magnum (52 ozs.), the jeroboam (104 ozs.), the rehoboam (156 ozs.), the methuselah (208 ozs.), the salmanazar (312 ozs.), the balthazar (416 ozs.), and the nebuchadnezzar (520 ozs., or the size of a small boy). Nothing larger than the methuselah is exported from France, and the largest domestic size is the jeroboam.

If your acquaintance with champagne has been rather casual, the best way to properly train your palate is to buy three or four pints or splits of champagne covering a wide price range. Chill them, and taste them slowly, one after another. Don't allow too long an interval between tastings. Eat a piece of bread stick if necessary to clear your taste buds now and then. Don't try the experiment if you've had a drop of any other kind of alcohol beforehand. Don't smoke. And by all means do it before mealtime when your taste buds and your nose are alive and kicking. The obvious differences that are revealed from one bottle to the next are always amazing. The experience will be a corking good one merely as an aperitif session.

There are a few important clues to excellence the knowing taster will seek. One of the first is the champagne's vinosity. It's simply the essential and natural flavor of the grape, call it "grapyness" if you will. Time and again a taster sampling a poor champagne will say that it tastes like water, meaning it lacks the deep, straight unmistakable flavor of the fruit – the flavor that reaches the top of your mouth and stays there after your glass is empty. It's just like a man eating a steak that's tender but who complains that it's less "beefy" than it should be. Dryness is often a valuable cue, too, since sugar is often, but not always, used to mask poor champagne. Aroma is important; in trying to gauge the aroma of champagne, the comparative test just suggested works better than anything. Such qualities as finesse and mellowness are learned only through long and happy practice. The effervescence of a fine champagne is shown in small steady bubbles, sometimes so small they're barely visible. It should not look like Alka Seltzer. In a testing recently, we found one magnificent champagne still alive with bubbles an hour and thirty-five minutes after pouring, standing at room temperature.

Little American champagne bears a vintage year, but that which does is usually an estimable bottling. When French champagne carries a vintage year, it simply means that in that particular year grapes were produced which gave the champagne a unique flavor. The salient fact to remember is that most old French firms use the same quality wines for their non-vintage as their vintage champagnes. They keep their quality uniformly high by an elaborate, artful, running system of blending wines from both different vineyards and different years. In any so-called vintage year, one man's grapes may be superb; his neighbor's might be unfit for vinegar.

If you're wondering when champagne should be served, stop wondering: it can be served any time. It has been called a dessert wine, and indeed it is wizard at meal's end, but actually it is the only potation that can be tippled before dinner as a cocktail, during dinner as an accompaniment to every course, and after dinner with the savory. It is a complement to all foods and is indispensable with caviar. Some say it is grand stuff on certain mornings, too, as a specific against the horrors.

How to serve? There's no mystery. Prior to pouring, it should of course be thoroughly chilled, but not frozen to death. If you're using the trusty fridge, rather than a bucket, place the bottle as far away from the freezing section as possible. The best temperature is between 40 and 50 degrees. Don't jostle the bottle unnecessarily before opening it. Old hands at removing corks follow this ritual. Twist off the wire muzzle. Hold the cork in your left hand. Grasp the body of the bottle with your right hand. Keep the bottle inclined slightly, but don't aim it at your guests. Be sure your grip on the cork is firm; you want it to stay in your hand, not take off like an unguided missile. Turn the bottle with your right hand, holding the cork still until it pops. Make sure the cork has no off odor. Wipe the rim of the bottle with a napkin. The best glass for savoring both flavor and bouquet is the 8-ounce tulip-shaped glass. Fill it half full. Opinions appear to coincide in regard to the saucer-shaped glass with the solid stem: it dissipates the bubbles too quickly. Opinion is divided in regard to the hollow-stemmed glass, however. Many experts claim that it, too, tends to debubble the bubbly, but other experts swear by it. To quote Alec Waugh again: "The best glass of all, they told me ['they' being French wine shippers], to retain the sparkle is one with a hollow stem." Ladies in the upper stratum of Continental society have discovered a new trick for "storing" champagne bubbles. They scratch the inside bottom of the glass with a diamond ring: the tiny scratches can't be seen, but they do provide a kind of cache for the bubbles, and the drink's sparkle lasts longer. We must admit we've not tested this ourself. Debunkers now frown upon the traditional white napkin which was wrapped around the bottle on the assumption that the warmth of the hands was undesirable. Apparently, this assumption has since been proven baseless, so the napkin may be dispensed with, if you wish. It is so glamorous, however, so much a part of the champagne image, that we have a soft spot in our heart for it.

That grand moment when the bottle is opened has been described with feeling and accuracy by the great Lichine: Most people, he avers, "feel a pleasant surge of excitement as the wire muzzle is twisted off the cork and it is slowly pried loose, the expectant pause giving way to happy chatter as the cork pops, the wisp of smoke curls up, and the sparkling wine foams into the tall glasses. Many frown on the practice of allowing the cork to pop, but others believe that the pop is half the fun." playboy is firmly pro-pop.

Apropos serving, it may be wise to be familiar with a couple of the less loathe-some mixed champagne drinks. We prefer our bubbly unalloyed, but occasionally the ladies will express a yearning for one of these:

The champagne cocktail. Drop one of those small sugar lumps into a saucerstyle glass (not with a hollow stem). Add a dash or two of bitters. Fill the glass with very cold champagne and then plunk in a twist of lemon. Because you're adding sugar, it's best to avoid the sweeter champagnes for this cocktail.

champagne punch. Many champagne punches are aswim with fruits, brandies and liqueurs – and here we absolutely put our foot down. The most pleasant champagne punch is also the simplest. Get a large block of lemon ice or sherbet (the two-quart size will fit best into most punch bowls). Freeze it until it's stone-hard, place it in the bowl, and fill the bowl with freshly opened champagne. It should be good champagne, but there is no sense wasting a fine vintage on a punch.

One of the questions a fair guest may ask is that hardy perennial, "Why is champagne so expensive?" So perhaps you should know the answers. One reason, of course, is that it is outrageously overtaxed as a luxury. But it would be expensive even were this not true. For one thing, the bottling procedure is terribly intricate. After fermentation has stopped, the bottles are placed on wooden racks with the necks slanting down. At frequent intervals a cellarman twists or shakes the bottle, coaxing the thick sediment toward the cork. An expert, they say, is capable of about thirty thousand shakes a day. When all the sediment nestles against the cork, the bottles are placed cork down, sur point, where they stay at attention for about a year. Then in a series of delicate assembly-line steps, specialists perform the miracle of getting rid of the sediment while losing practically none of the bubbles. Each upside-down bottle is dipped in a brine bath up to the neck line in order to freeze the sediment into a solid mass. A workman quickly pries loose the cork, and the pressure in the bottle sends the cork with its frozen cargo popping out. The bottle is temporarily plugged until another worker replaces any wine that might have been lost. Then a small amount of rock candy sugar dissolved in old wine is added, depending on how sweet the champagne is to be. This syrup, the liqueur d'Expédition, is added just before the final cork seals the bubbly prior to shipment.

The high cost of bottling champagne is only part of the squeeze. So severe is the French law in the Champagne district that only grapes of a certain type are allowed to be grown. They must be pruned in a certain way and tied in one of four approved styles. Not only during the fall but all year long the vines are carefully nursed. If frost threatens, you will see thousands of smudge pots dotting the hills of the Marne. Most owner-growers prefer to have a variety of patches in different sections so that if the worst tragedy of all – hail – occurs, it may possibly strike one section and not another. When the grapes are finally harvested, only those of a certain mature size, color and ripeness are selected and laid out on long reed tables for inspection. Over them a woman stands with long pointed shears, ready to snip off any single grape that isn't perfect. Like fresh eggs, the grapes are tenderly placed in large baskets. On the way to the pressing houses, they're borne on oxdriven carts fitted with large springs to prevent even the slightest bump, since premature bruising might cause fermentation too early. From a certain tonnage of grapes only a restricted amount of juice is permitted to be drawn for champagne. While the law specifies that champagne must be aged at least a year, most old houses age it three to five.

Another question you may be asked is, "What makes it sparkle?" It might be fun to answer with an anecdote about the time Frederick William the First of Prussia asked that same question of his Academy of Sciences. The savants stroked their beards and sent off this reply to their monarch: "The problem is worthy of attention and the Academy will pursue the problem to its ultimate conclusion. We need fifty to sixty bottles of French champagne to study the subject properly." Frederick William promptly ordered the sixty bottles, but he gave the scientists only a dozen of them. The remaining forty-eight he drank himself.