It all began in 1996.
My passion for champagne, that is.
For work I had moved back to Italy and I was involved in sports. Football, mainly, and—without going into too much detail—let’s just say that I worked with the most decorated Italian team and that, a year later, it would celebrate its 100th anniversary. In that context, I had the good fortune to meet the illustrious captain of industry that the world has always envied us. Now imagine that, at the time, despite having lived in Paris and having been engaged to the son of a well-known wine producer, everything that revolved around anything more alcoholic than pineapple juice was completely outside my field of interest: super sporty, super fit, without a trace of makeup and even less a trace of heels, I was the Doris Day de noantri, the perfect candidate for the title of Italy’s sweetheart.
But then that day, suddenly, in the middle of the whirlwind of celebrations, caught up in the atmosphere of euphoria, I got distracted for a moment and… “This stuff is good, but what is it?” I asked out loud, loudly enough for my host to hear me and reply, “Champagne Phillipponnat… I’m glad you like it, Dr. Romano, it’s my favorite!”.
You must have experienced love at first sight too, I hope, so I won’t explain in detail the uncontrollable desire to have another sip, and another, and then another… my baptism with champagne was also the moment when I discovered that every reckless action has consequences and that, in this case, the consequence is called a hangover.
Boris Tabakoff, professor of pharmacology at the University of Colorado, claims that the worst hangover is the one that follows a big champagne binge, because of the carbon dioxide contained in the drink, which facilitates alcohol absorption. From that moment on, drowned—at least in my opinion—in the hectoliters of champagne that followed that first time, the Doris Day within me gave way to another kind of blonde, one whose relationship with champagne was more similar to that of Marie Antoinette with Piper-Heidsieck, so to speak.
It was the 1990s and sabrer le champagne was very fashionable, and it was increasingly common to saber bottles at trendy events. In those years I lived between Rome, Paris, Milan and Miami, and in the United States the trendsetters were rap and hip hop artists, with their excesses that seemed rather clumsy to those who, like me, came from the Old Continent: “Let’s take the dough and stay real jiggy, uh-huh, And sip the Cris’ and get pissy-pissy” sang JAY-Z, mentioning the famous Cristal by Louis Roederer, the favorite champagne of the time with its gold labels and bottles, incredibly flashy.
My coup de coeur for champagne kept growing bubble after bubble, but I did not know that I would have to wait a few more years before that infatuation turned into great love. And that moment came one evening in Geneva, when for the first time I tasted a flute of R.D.: it felt as though I had never drunk champagne before that moment.
Of course, one could argue that it is not fair play to compare an R.D. with an entry-level bottle of any other champagne, and I could not disagree. But my preference for Bollinger starts with the Special Cuvée, the everyday champagne that you will always find in my fridge, all the way to Vieilles Vignes Françaises, with which I toast on truly important occasions, passing through La Côte aux Enfants which—together with Amarone and Ornellaia—are my favorite red wines.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since that evening in Geneva, and there are dozens of champagne labels that I have been lucky enough to taste. Yet, after so many years, the intensity of the emotion I feel every time, once back home, I pour myself a glass of bubbles is still the same as that very first time and that candlelit dinner sipping champagne. But that, mes amis, is another story entirely…
