Author: lgsjr

Overlooked Places

Each month, Power Tasting features a Place to Visit when someone is on a wine tasting trip.  These are not wine-related locations, but interesting spots in some region of Wine Country that deserve a visit when in the area.  Many are fairly obvious, like Paris, Porto or Vienna.  Others are popular with tourists who come into that area.  But there are a few that are forgotten; actually, it is more that they are overlooked.

These places are never destinations.  We just happened to be in them and found them charming and welcoming.  There were no buses; no crammed parking lots and virtually no visitors other than ourselves.  San Gimignano in Tuscany was like that the first time we stopped there; now it is as crowed as Times Square.  We can even remember when it was difficult to find lunch in Healdsburg.  The kind of places we are talking about are still unspoiled.

A Buonconvento street scene.  Photo courtesy of castellotoscani.com.

When you’re wine tasting in Tuscany you may find yourself on the road from Siena, on your way to Montalcino.  There will be a sign pointing to Buonconvento, literally meaning the “good convento” but interpreted by the locals as “a happy place”.  We once pulled off the road and found ourselves at a standup cappuccino bar, with a few older folks staring at us. They were friendly but curious, wondering “why are you people here?”  In fractured Italian we explained that we just wanted some coffee and a rest stop.  They, in broken English, urged us to take a look around the town. 

The streets were clean; children were playing; and the local church was quite pretty with some interesting frescoes.  We have read since that it is considered to be one of the most beautiful villages in Tuscany.  We can’t speak to that, but it was very typical of what we expected a Tuscan village to look like and were glad to have stopped.

Peniches along the Canal du Midi in Poilhes.

Another such village is Poilhes in southern France.  There is some dispute how to pronounce it, but the closest we can get is “poo-yeh”.  There are vineyards surrounding the commune extend as far as the eye can see, so the surrounding area is a great destination for learning about Languedoc wines. 

You can drive from one end of Poilhes to the other in about two minutes.  If you don’t blink, you’ll see the Canal du Midi and rental boats called péniches moored there at the end of the day.  There’s a chic restaurant we found overrated, but the boating tourists flock to it.  We preferred a simple café nestled under a spreading platane tree, run by a couple of British emigrants.  Even more so, we loved wine store-cum-hotel called Vinauberge, which we have profiled previously.  There is a huge selection of local wines that can be sampled by the pour.

There’s nothing much going on in Poilhes.  You can walk along the canal or visit the cemetery with its poignant memorials to wartime dead.  That’s about it.  And that’s the point.  It’s a great place to do nothing.

Storybook Mountain Vineyards

There are fashions in cars, clothes and cosmetics.  And there are fashions in wine, even in the popularity of wineries to visit.  When we first started visiting Napa Valley, there were not nearly as many wineries as there are today.  And not all of them were open for tasting.  The top attractions were names like Mondavi, Chandon and Heitz.  Small, out-of-the-way wineries were barely talked of. 

The view from Storybook Mountain winery.  Photo courtesy of NapaValley.com

But those in the know, mostly West Coast friends would tell us, “If you get as far as Calistoga, you must go to Storybook Mountain winery”.  Frankly, it sounded more like a ride at Disneyland than a winery.  So we went and we liked it very much.  It is hard to call Storybook a forgotten winery, especially since they have been making wine there since 1883.  But people no longer whisper its name anymore, so we will speak of it, out loud.

Storybook isn’t exactly off the beaten path, but it is at the northern end of it, four miles north of Calistoga.  Go only a little further and you’re in Knight’s Valley.  It’s way up in the hills, perhaps why it’s not so well known these days.

The name of the winery is a story in itself.  It was started by a German immigrant named Adam Grimm, who was soon joined by his brother Jacob.  So: the Brothers Grimm, hence the storybook.  Their label is a fox trying to reach up to some grapes, which is an Aesop fable not a Grimm fairytale.  But you get the idea.

The ancient caves at Storybook Mountain.  Photo courtesy of Crafted Brands.

After Prohibition, the winery was abandoned until a scholar named Jerry Seps bought it in 1976.  From the outset, they planted Zinfandel and that’s the grape used in the wines for which Storybook is best known.  They make four of them plus a Zin rosé.  They also have a Cabernet Sauvignon and a single white wine, a Viogner.

One of the great attractions in visiting Storybook is the beauty of the place.  All visits include a tour and a tasting.  The caves survived from the times of the Grimm brothers.  The land is surrounded by a redwood grove, which is part of the tour.  The views from Storybook – it is a mountain – are ravishing.

Come to Storybook for the wine and the views, but also appreciate the history.  It isn’t only that the land was producing wine grapes for over 100 years.  This vineyard has roots (pun intended) in Europe but also in the revolution in American winemaking that began in Napa Valley in the 1960’s and 70’s.  They served Cabernet Sauvignon at that famous taste-off in Paris in 1976, so Storybook couldn’t have been there.  But they have had their wines served at White House dinners and they were among the first, along with Ridge and Trefethen, to see the potential in the Zinfandel grape for wine greatness.

So take the tour, enjoy the views and sip the wines, knowing that you are partaking in a story (also intended) that goes back deep into Napa Valley’s past.

Forgotten Tastings

Power Tasting’s motto is “Know what you like.  Remember what it’s called”.  Developing a taste memory is one of the most difficult skills to develop for wine professionals.  For us amateurs, it’s enough to be able to keep in mind some general characteristics, such as “X winery makes light, fruity Pinot Noirs” or “A typical Napa Valley Chardonnay is buttery and oaky”.  For all the importance of remembering, there is also something to be said for its counterpart: forgetting.

  From the movie Sideways. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

When entering a tasting room, we have to forget what we’ve read, heard or tasted previously and bring an open mind (and mouth) to evaluating what we’re being served.

  • The only thing that matters is what’s in the glass.  We have had occasions to return to a winery whose products we hadn’t cared for.  We have had some happy surprises, such as at Napa’s Black Stallion.  And we have also had more disappointments than we like to remember.  Perhaps ownership of a winery changed hands, or they hired a new winemaker or maybe they just hit a bad year.  Focus on the wine in front of you and you will improve your tasting acumen.
  • Don’t always trust your first sip.  This is especially the case when the server opens a new bottle in front of you.  We have often experienced that at home, with good science behind our reaction.  Every wine label has a warning: “Contains sulfites”.  They’re used to kill germs and prevent spoilage, but they also may leave a slightly sulfurous gas in the bottle.  In part, that’s why we let wine breathe, but that’s not always possible in a wine tasting setting.  So forget the first taste, swirl the wine somewhat aggressively to let the gas escape and taste it again.
  • Don’t let your memories fool you.  It’s a natural human tendency to approach an experience with expectations and then let those expectations override the current reality.  This is more than being in the moment, as previously recommended. It requires an active effort not to think about what you think you remember (not always the same as what you actually remember).
  • Stick to your guns.  You can and should continue to have your own opinion about a wine even though other people are trying to tell you that you are wrong.  Almost by definition, there’s no arguing taste (although that’s exactly what we do when we go wine tasting).  So if you like a wine and everyone else in your party detests it, you can forget their complaints.  It’s a good wine…for you.
  • One bad day doesn’t rule out a winery forever.  We have written before that you ought to give a winery a second chance.  The mightiest hitters sometimes strike out.  The Nobel Prize winning author doesn’t always write a masterpiece.  And sometimes the most renowned vineyards come up with a poorer wine.  So, as we say in Brooklyn, fuggedaboutit.

Forgotten Wines

When we go wine tasting, we look forward to discovering wineries and wines that we never knew about before.  For as many years as we have indulged in this avocation, we still make wonderful discoveries each trip.  But we also find ourselves visiting some wineries repeatedly because we know their wines and appreciate the opportunity to taste them again.  This is especially true with limited edition wines that are only available at the winery. 

So imagine our disappointment when we arrive at a tasting room only to find that certain of our favorites are not available.  It’s a shame when they’ve run out of a particular wine, but it’s near tragic when we find that the wine we were looking forward to is not longer being made.  Well, tragic is a bit strong, but it does make us sad. 

This problem only applies to wines from certain places, in our experience.  In Europe, they’ve made the same wines from the same grapes in the same places for centuries.  They’re not about to change now, and there are often laws preventing them from doing so.  Only in the United States and Australia do they make wines that come and then go. So we’d like to pay homage to some wines we’ll never taste again.

Preston’s iconic Moscato Curioso poster, framed and hanging on our wall.  There’s a smile here, because the yard in front of the Preston winery is crawling with cats, which they love.

  • For many years, Preston in Dry Creek has been a “must go to” whenever we are in Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma County.  They make wonderful wines primarily from Rhône-style grapes.  In the past, they used to make more wine, but in the early years of the century they cut back wine production in favor of olive oil and general agriculture.  (They are now Preston Farm and Winery.)  In so doing, they stopped making two of our favorites.  One was called Faux, because it was a fake Côtes du Rhône.   Make-believe it may have been, but it was a very fine wine. Another was a real gem, a dessert wine called Muscato Curioso.  It was sweet and luscious and it was a hallmark of Preston at the time.  They even made a widely loved poster about the wine.  We still have the poster on our wall, but alas, we’ll never taste it again.
  • Long Island’s North Fork now boasts over 60 wineries, but the first winemaker to turn a potato patch into a vineyard was Alex Hargrave in 1973.  In 1999, he sold his winery and vineyards to a noble Italian family, who now operate Castello di Borghese.  Today’s wines have a distinctively Italian character.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but they’re different from what the Hargrave Vineyard used to make on the same land.  For their time, they were unusual wines, as the region was trying to develop its own style.  They aged nicely but there’s no way to taste anything like them any longer.
  • Decades ago, we travelled to the Hunter Valley in Australia.  A winery in the region, Tulloch, was serving something they called, humbly, Tulloch’s Table Red.  It tasted to us like sunshine in a bottle, and we bought several bottles.  A few years later we were in Sydney and searched for it in local wine stores, only to be told that it was an experiment by the winery and they no longer made it.  All we were left with was the memory.
  • Finally, Joseph Phelps in St. Helena, Napa Valley, used to sell a Rhône-style wine that they called Vin du Mistral.  (The Mistral is a seasonal cold wind that blows over Provence.)  It was very reminiscent of the wines from the southern Rhône valley and it was quite affordable.  Phelps discontinued it in 2008.  They now have a wine by the same name but it’s not the same wine.  The grapes now come from Central Coast vineyards in the Santa Barbara and Paso Robles areas, not Napa Valley.  And it’s no longer inexpensive.

Teaching Young Tasters

It doesn’t happen often, but there are times when we have served wine to someone who has recently gained majority and is eager to learn about wine.  There are laws against pouring for anyone under 21 years of age, but we remember that our parents let us have a few sips when we were not quite at that age.  We might do the same at home today, but of course that cannot happen at a winery (or any other public place).

Photo courtesy of Willows Lodge.

If you are open to teaching a young taster, you’ll find some challenges.  Here are some tips we’ve picked up over time.

  • Sip, don’t slurp.  For the most part, children are raised drinking milk, water and Coca-Cola.  They don’t understand sipping.  If they had a few drinks at college, they probably chugged beer or cheap wine.  (Most students can’t afford anything more.)  So the first step is to get them to slow down.
  • “They all taste the same”.  It is probably true that whatever wines they have tasted are undistinguished.  It’s a good idea to remember what you were drinking at their age.  It is also a good idea to give them the chance to try some wine that interests you.  It’s likely to have more character than what comes out of a bottle that costs less than five dollars.
  • “It still tastes the same”.  Tasting one wine, by itself, is not enough to educate them away from what they already know.  So serve two rather contrasting wines.  Maybe a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Pinot Noir or a buttery California Chardonnay and a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.  Then ask the young person to describe the difference.  First, they immediately recognize that all wines aren’t the same.  Second, they begin to find the vocabulary to describe taste experiences.
  • The wine tasting procedure.  At this point, you can explain some of the basics of tasting wine.  Don’t fill the glass too much.  Swirl it before smelling it.  Smell it before you taste it.  At that point, say, “Don’t think about it, just tell us what the aroma reminds you of”.  Try to get your guest to differentiate the tastes in the attack (the first sip), from mid-mouth (what’s it like on your tongue?) and the finish (what do you still taste after you’ve swallowed it?)
  • Wine and food.  If you can, serve some appropriate food with the wine.  This is easy if you’re serving wine with dinner, but it’s harder at a winery.  The primary point is to teach that fine wine is meant to be an accompaniment to good food.  Moreover, you can demonstrate that what you eat affects what you taste in a wine glass and vice versa.
  • Avoid excess.  If young people already have some experience with alcohol, it probably came from something like a kegger at the frat.  They need to learn that wine – at least quality wine – is meant to be an extension to other good things in life, not a way to get drunk.  Of course, too much wine – of any quality – can get you drunk.  Try to get across that that’s not why you are a wine afficionado.

Viader Vineyards and Winery

We have been visiting Napa Valley wineries for some years – decades, in fact – before we even heard of Viader.  A colleague at work who also enjoys wine tasting put us on to it, with the warnings that it was difficult to find and difficult to get a reservation.  Perhaps we hadn’t heard of Viader because we had never passed it on Route 29, the Silverado Trail or the roads between them.  That’s because Viader is perched 1,400 feet above the valley floor on Howell Mountain.  You have to want to go there to go there; you won’t just be passing by.

The view from Viader Winery.

As to the difficulty of finding the winery, our colleague overstated the case.  You simply have to turn off the Silverado Trail at Deer Park Road and then keep climbing until you’re there.  It’s a bit tricky recognizing that you are there, as the winery tells you to “look for the rust-iron gate before the sharp, 15 MPH, hairpin turn”.  It’s worth the journey.

Power Tasting doesn’t review wines but rather the experience of visiting wineries.  So suffice it to say that Viader makes excellent wines from red grapes.  They don’t make a lot, so their wines are rather exclusive.  If you are a lover of big California reds, you’ll be happy with what you get to taste there.

However, what we remember most from visiting Viader is the ambiance and in particular the view.  For your tasting, you sit on a terrace overlooking the valley below, with vines in front of you and forest on the sides.  A server appears from time to time with another wine for you to try but you are left pretty much alone to soak it all in, feeling very happy to be left alone sipping the wine and admiring the view.  The prospect before you doesn’t overwhelm the wines.  Rather, the wine only enhances the experience.

Viader has an interesting back story.  Delia Viader founded the winery in the 1980’s, when female winemakers were virtually unheard of.  She saw the potential for wines made from grapes grown on Howell Mountain and took advantage of it.  She is still very much involved in the winery, but today her son Alan is the winemaker.  They suffered a tragedy in 2005 when an arsonist destroyed their entire 2003 production.  Fortunately, Viader bounced back and are very much in business today.

Viader doesn’t make very many wines.  Their annual production is around 4,000 cases and it consists of red wines made from Bordeaux grapes, in particular Cabernet Sauvignon.  (It is Napa Valley, after all.)  Cabernet Franc is also included in their flagship wine, known simply as Viader Proprietary Blend.  Other wines also feature blends of those grapes with Syrah and Malbec.

It is true that reservations are needed for a visit, as is the case these days at nearly every Napa Valley winery.  However, we have found that a same-day phone call can result in a tour of the vineyards, a tasting and that marvelous view.

Monopoli

So you’re going to Italy on vacation.  You surely want to do some wine tasting while you’re there.  If you go to Tuscany, you’ll likely be sipping Chianti or Brunello and you’ll want to visit Florence and Siena.  If your plan is to visit Valpolicella, you’ll also want to stop in Verona.  In Puglia, you’ll taste Primitivo and you’ll also see… Well, there are no obvious destinations in Puglia.  So let us recommend Monopoli, on the east coast of the heel of the boot.

No, Monopoli has nothing to do with the board game.  In ancient times, Monopoli was a province of the Greeks, and the town’s name means something like “singular people”.  Over time, the town has been ruled by Spain, the Saracens and the city of Venice, which had the most lasting cultural influence.

Today, Monopoli has a split personality.  It is an industrial city of 50,000 people with a well preserved old town, or Centro Storico in Italian.  It’s that part of Monopoli that you’ll want to explore.

For starters, we suggest that you just walk around to get the feel of the place.  Located on the Adriatic Sea, there’s plenty of waterfront.  A stroll along the lungomare, atop the old seawall, is very pleasant.  (Lungomare means “along the sea”.  You’ll see the pleasure craft in the harbor alongside commercial fishing boats.  If you keep walking, you’ll reach the lighthouse guarding the harbor.  Turn around and take in the excellent view of Monopoli.

Lunch in Monopoli’s Piazza Garibaldi.

At that point you may be ready for a meal.  As in any Italian city, there are caffes and enotecas all around town.  The main gathering spot, with restaurants all around it, is the Piazza Garibaldi, the general who led the fight to reunite Italy.  (Be careful when you talk about him; some of the southerners still think the Italian north conquered the southern part of the country.)  In good weather, which is most of the year, you can sit there sipping a variety of local wines.  We especially enjoy a Fiano to accompany the abundant seafood, with Negroamaro or Primitivo to go along with the pizza.

The cathedral in Monopoli.

Not to be missed is the Cathedral of Maria Santissima della Madia.  In its way it encapsulates Monopoli’s history.  The front of the cathedral was built in the plateresque style typical of Renaissance Spain.  The interior is decorated in the ebullient manner that you can see in Venice.  But here and there are bits of evidence of the town’s Greek past, particularly in the iconography.

If you have the chance, take a boat ride outside the harbor.  There are many boatmen who are only too happy to accommodate you.  It’s especially pleasant at the end of the day, when the sun goes down and the lights come up.  If you know Fellini’s movies, you’ll feel like you’re in one.

Monopoli at sunset.

Florence and Verona, as mentioned, are cities that have plenty of touristic interest.  Monopoli’s Centro Storico comes very close to everyone’s idealized vision of an Italian village.

Bars, Wine Bars and Restaurants

Let’s say you’re going out with some friends for a few drinks.  Wine lover that you are, you tell your friends that you’d like to go somewhere where they have some nice wines by the glass, rather than to one of the cocktail bars that seem to be springing up everywhere.  So where should you go?

Photo courtesy of Time Out New York.

For the most part, neighborhood bars have two kinds of wine: red and white.  These wines come in large bottles or jugs and are often the cheapest of the cheap, although the bartender will still charge a premium price.  Fortunately, there are some bars – even some old-time Irish saloons like the ones we have around our home – that are adding a few interesting wines by the glass.  This may be because they have come to realize that there is customer demand for better wines or because they can get an even higher premium price for them.

If you want a broad selection of wines to try, a wine bar is the place for you.  For you, yes, but maybe some of your friends would prefer a beer or a glass of whiskey.  They would be left out at a spot that only serves wine. 

But let’s assume that they’re okay with a wine bar as the destination for the evening, or one of them.  Instead of having too few choices at your local tavern, you can find yourself with too many at a wine bar.  There are many that offer flights of several small pours of a variety of wines, usually stylistically similar.  That turns a drinking evening into a wine tasting one.  If four people, say, choose four different flights and you don’t mind sharing glasses, you will have quite the wine tasting experience.

Some restaurants have a good selection of wines by the glass.  If it’s a restaurant with an extensive wine list, there should be quite a few to choose among.  “Should be” is the operative term.  Restaurants make their money selling bottles of wine to accompany meals.  It’s rare that the wines you’d really like to have just a glass of is available.   All too often, the wines that can be bought a glass at a time are limited in number and are taken from the bottom of the restaurant’s list.

There are some exceptions to this pattern.  The bars at steak houses, for example, often feature big red wines that go well with the food they serve.  They often sell good-quality Cabernet Sauvignons or Merlots by the glass.  If you’re in the mood for some delicate Chablis, you’ll probably be out of luck.  Of course, the reverse is true at a seafood restaurant. The point is that you can experience an interesting selection of wines at a variety of locations…if you know what they serve.  This is where the internet comes into play.  Take a look at the wines they offer before you go out for the evening and you’re less likely to be dis

Freixinet, Back When

There are many sparkling wines made around the various corners of Wine Country.  Unquestionably the best and the best known is Champagne, which must be made in a particular section of northern France.  There are some nice bubbly wines made in Napa Valley.  The Germans and Austrians make Sekt.  Italians produce Prosecco.  And in Spain, not far from Barcelona, they grow grapes and make Cava from them.  Among the best known Cavas in the United State was – and is – Freixinet.

Back in the day, far off in the past, we didn’t know about any of that.  If it had bubbles, it was champagne.  In fact, despite the fact that the French owned the name, there were (and still are, in a few instances) American sparkling wines that were called champagne, right there on the label.  There was even something that had bubbles called Cold Duck; even then we knew that this stuff was awful.

Photo courtesy of Grupo Freixinet.

But we also knew that we couldn’t afford real Champagne.  A bottle of Moet & Chandon might have cost $10, but that was a lot of money when we were just starting out on adult life.  That was when we discovered Freixinet.  In the beginning, it came in a frosted bottle.  The bottle alone and a difficult-to-pronounce name made it seem so chic and, well, European.  Later Freixinet offered their Cordon Negro in a black bottle, which added elegance to its appeal.

The fact that it cost about two dollars made it accessible even for our pocketbooks in those days.  And so we opened it whenever there was something to celebrate:  The end of the semester.  Our team winning a championship.  Friday.  We had no idea how to open a bottle, what kind of glasses to pour it in or how to sip it.  We just knew that it had bubbles and that we liked it.

Not that long ago, we had the opportunity to try it once again.  By that point, we had been drinking real Champagne for many years and the Freixinet was a disappointment.  Did we really drink that stuff?  

Yes we did and it introduced us to sparkling wine, in itself and as a part of being grown-up.  There was mystery and romance in a bottle of Freixinet, a sense that someday we could be sophisticated if we tried, if only we knew how.  The idea of Freixinet was in many ways more important than what was in the bottle (or on the floor because we thought the right way to enjoy it was to spray some when we opened a bottle).

These days we only drink French Champagne and occasionally a top-end California sparkling wine.  We know a great deal more about wine and wine tasting than we did in our youth, which we guess makes us more sophisticated.  But do we really enjoy it any more than we did when we were drinking Freixinet back then?  We’re not sure; alas, we can’t remember. 

Once we hosted a blind tasting of Champagnes.  Just for fun we included a bottle of Freixinet.  One of our guests actually chose the Freixinet as her favorite.  De gustibus non disputandem est as the Romans used to say (there’s no arguing with taste), nor with good memories.

Reims

Power Tasting has alluded to the French city of Reims in a number of previous issues, but we have never highlighted it as a Place to Visit.  Perhaps the first thing we ought to say about Reims is how to pronounce it.  Not easy for American mouths, it certainly is not Raymes or Reems as the spelling might indicate.  You need to start with that French “r”, which sort of comes from saying the sound of the letter at the same time you are clearing your throat.  The vowels don’t follow the usual American path either; they’re more like aah, as in “aah, phooey”.  The “m” disappears altogether and is pronounced sort of like “n” as spoken through your nose.  At least the “s” survives intact.

Maybe more Americans would go to Reims if they called it Smith, which the French have a hard time pronouncing correctly.  Americans, at least those who love Champagne wine and medieval splendor should visit Reims, because the city has a lot of both.  If you just want a day trip from Paris for wine tasting and sightseeing, Reims is perfect.  And if you’re looking for a base for touring the Champagne region for several days, Champagne is perfect for that, too.

The Charles de Cazanove winery is five minutes’ walk from the Reims train station. Photo courtesy of the Union de Maisons de Champagne.

Reims is one of the two major centers of Champagne production, the other being Épernay.  The best known grands maisons in Reims are Mumm, Veuve Clicquot, Pommery and Taittinger.  There are many other lesser known houses in Reims, including Lanson, G. H. Martel and Cazanove.  Getting to Reims from Paris is easy.  There’s a TGV train from the Gare de l’Est that will get you there in under an hour.  (TGV means train à grande vitesse, or very fast train.)  Getting around once you’re there is more difficult.  There are taxis at the train station or on-call and Uber works just like at home.

The “Smiling Angel” at the Cathedral of Reims.

Besides tasting the local sparkling wines, the Reims Cathedral is not to be missed.  It was for more than twelve centuries the place where the kings of France were crowned, including Charles VII.  He only got there because Joan of Arc captured the city from the English.  The cathedral that now stands in Reims was built in the 13th and 14th centuries.  The entire structure is a model of Gothic glory.  Among the best loved sights are the “Smiling Angel” in one of the entrance arches, the extraordinary rose window and the Chagall windows in the Lady Chapel.  The rose window had to be taken down – very carefully – and stored to preserve it during the First and Second World Wars.  Other windows weren’t so lucky.  That’s why they recruited Marc Chagall to replace the ones destroyed in the second war.

You can drive from Reims to Épernay in under an hour, but don’t.  Drive slowly and admire the gorgeous countryside.  Take small side roads, even get a bit lost, and visit some of the hundreds of Champagne houses between the two cities.  They don’t get the volume of visitors that the big houses do, so they greet you just a bit more enthusiastically.  And tell yourself how lucky you are to be in Champagne.