Give Champagne

Gifting wine can be a little tricky I’ve learned. Part of the reason is that the wines that I love aren’t necessarily the wines that the person receiving the gift will love. It’s really the same situation sommeliers find themselves in on a nightly basis. That is, recommending a wine to a person not based on what you like, but on what they like. Additionally, if the bottle is “too nice” it will likely not get opened. The giftee will save the bottle for an occasion special enough to warrant opening it and if they never open it, then they never really enjoy the gift you’ve given them. Quite an enigma.

The solution: Champagne. I mean, who doesn’t like sparkling wine?! And furthermore, you need to search out grower-producer champagne. It may seem like common sense that a winery would grow their own grapes, press those grapes at their winery and turn them into bubbly wine all on premise. After all, that’s how it’s done, right? Well, in Champagne, that is actually not always the case. Champagne is very much a commodity still and the names that most people are familiar with are generally large companies that either buy the grapes, or buy the juice, or even buy the finished product and slap a label on it! Therefore, we don’t always get to know the smaller producers who have an eye on quality over quantity and control every step of their winemaking process from growing the grapes through producing the sparkling wine – “Grower Producers.”

Search out these producers and give their Champagne as gifts. I find that because these producers’ Champagnes are relatively unknown to most, they don’t have the urge to save them such as they might a bottle of Dom Perignon or Krug – rather they have a curiosity to open them and experience them. A quick note to accompany it such as, “to be opened the night of the 25th as the last gift of the day!” helps to goad them into enjoying it and allows you to be a part of their holiday celebration in some small way.

Andy Chabot, Director of Food and Beverage