On the topic of the bubbly.

It’s a well-known fact in these parts that I don’t think much of wine wankery. I respect knowledge in any field, but man, I like my two-buck Chuck and I don’t think that makes me anything but thrifty and cognizant that as long as white wine is cold, it tastes good. So I thought for a long time that I didn’t like champagne. I only ever drank it on New Year’s Eve, and I always woke up with a hangover that could stun a team of oxen in its tracks. I wasn’t wild about the taste, thought fizziness in wine was overrated (if that’s all you want, just go buy a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill and save yourself the bucks) and generally didn’t get the hype.

Then last year on a trip to Florida some friends and I got a little tipsy in a restaurant and thought since we were all celebrating our 30th birthdays, we might as well do it up right. We ordered off the grown-ups’ wine list, and got ourselves a bottle of this.

Turns out I didn’t hate champagne. I’d just never had really good champagne before. Where had champagne been all my life? Happy fizzy bouncy goodness that had me singing in the street and toasting world peace with my long-suffering compatriots, this was heaven in a little skinny glass.

What do you all like in your champers?

A.