Leisure

Unleash the Corks

A top Californian chef justifies why you should drink champagne more than just once a year

By: Sang Yoon, as told to Joel Weber; Photographs: Robyn Twomey
Published: December 2008/January 2009   [ Updated: Jan 29, 2009 - 10:35:15 AM ]

Open a bottle of champagne and try not to smile—we're hardwired to associate that pop! with joy. Which is why I've never understood why Americans don't drink more champagne. Even in college, I'd spend $20 on a bottle of Moet & Chandon White Star. But it wasn't until I began working with amazing chefs that I came to appreciate excellent champagne, especially from "houses," as producers are called, that release their wines only on good years. And as my collection expanded, I became more and more interested in vintage champagne. A mysterious blend of various harvests from around the region doesn't interest me as much as champagne that reflects exactly when and where the grapes were grown and harvested—its terroir. "My only regret in life," the economist John Maynard Keynes said on his deathbed, "is that I did not drink more champagne." I have no intention of sharing that regret. My collection of 3,200 bottles is valued in the seven figures, but I go through at least three a week. Here are some of my favorite bottles.

1973 Salon
"Three types of grapes are used to make champagne: chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier. If only chardonnay is used, like with this bottle, then it's called blanc de blancs. I first tasted this vintage when I was 19 and working under the legendary chef Joel Robuchon in France. It cost $80—a lot of money for me at the time."

1996 Krug
"I'll probably age this bottle for at least 20 years because it's such an interesting vintage. It's like a flower bud that isn't ready to open. I consider 1988 a similar vintage, and I haven't even opened those yet."

1969 Krug
"I own three of these magnums. I'm sentimental about them because they were made the year I was born. Like most brut champagne, they contain juice from all three types of grapes, but these happen to be the most valuable bottles in my collection—about $6,000 apiece. I had a fourth, but my closest friends and I drank it out of plastic cups on a Caribbean beach after a dinner party. It was absolutely perfect."

1966 Tattinger Comtes de Champagne Rosé
"This is a gorgeous bottle, probably the most attractive one I own. It reminds me of the lamp in I Dream of Jeannie—skinny all the way down and then wide at the bottom. It's a rosé, which means the vintners let crushed grapes sit with their skins for a few hours to add color and tannin."

1997 Bollinger Vielles Vignes Française
"This bottle comes from a tiny plot of land on the Bollinger estate, where the vines predate phylloxera, the parasite that wiped out all the French vineyards in the mid-1800s. Somehow this little patch survived that and both World Wars, so its vines are very, very old."

1911 Cuvee Maxim
"This is the first work of Eugene-Aime Salon, who founded the house of Salon 10 years later. He got his start making this, the house pour at Maxim's, a famous Parisian restaurant. It's my oldest vintage and, like I often do, I bought it at auction. One reason I collect champagne instead of still wine is that, because each bottle is carbonated, the odds of its being skunked are fairly low. Moet even has a bottle from 1889 in its caves that's supposedly drinkable."