A Scent of Champagne: 8,000 Champagnes Tasted and Rated
by richard juhlin
skyhorse publishing,
400 pages, $95

Lord Keynes regretted very little, but he once confided to Noel Annan that he wished he had drunk more champagne. As with most of his pronouncements that did not touch directly upon questions of faith or morals, it is difficult to disagree with him here, or with Dickens, who, on days when he gave public readings, liked to have a pint of it at teatime. Champagne is one of the great achievements of European civilization, that name some use for epiphenomena of the Catholic Church: more portable than Salisbury Cathedral or St. Mark’s; giving more pleasure, if one is being honest, than vast swathes of Bach and Mozart; and far less likely to be a near occasion of sin than the Canterbury Tales or Madame Bovary.

My insistence on “European,” as opposed to merely French, is purposeful. While it is certainly the best thing ever to have come out of Rheims—does anyone doubt that we will be drinking Taittinger and Veuve Clicquot centuries after everyone has stopped reading the Bible translation of Fr. Gregory Martin and his fellow exiles?—it would be a mistake to think of champagne as an entirely Gallic affair. Its history is more various and fascinating.

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