Wow.  Sometimes you have just giggle and say, it's fun to be living in the good old US of A.  I mean, besides the fact that we're a top contributor to global warming (and don't get me started on our politics)- hey, so is Australia!  and England!  And do THEY have Champagne Day? 
I don't THINK so!

So, enjoy your Friday, have some bubbles, and blow a kiss to your French friends for one of their great contributions to the world.

Did you know that August 4th is National Champagne day???

Well, now you do! So break out a bottle of bubbly… Some of my favorites are VC (obviously), Perrier Jouët, Taittinger, Heidsieck, Bollinger, and Mumm. It kind of depends on the years and sub-brands. The last VC I tried failed to bowl me over…
A couple of interesting tidbits:

• In Roman times, the area where bubbly is now grown was referred to as campus or campania … aka “field.” This became ‘champaign’ in Old French… And it’s no stretch of the imagination how this became Champagne.
• The Region of where the grapes are grown was thus called Champagne before the drink was.
• Why is Veuve Clicquot famous??! In her cellar, dégorgement was perfected. The cellar master @ Veuve Clicquot developed a way to get the sediment of dead yeast cells to collect in the neck of the bottle so the wine wouldn’t have to be decanted (super time consuming!).
• Champagne wasn’t bubbly until the 17th century…!
• Dom Pérignon (the most famous sub-brand - made by Moët & Chandon) did not invent champagne. He was a Benedictine monk (!!!) and he put a lot of effort into preventing the bubbles. At the time, bubbles were considered a signal of inferior wine quality. While he didn’t manage to tame the sparkles, he developed a method for pressing black grapes into a white liquid - which was novel at the time - and perfected clarification techniques so that white wine was decidedly white, and not a murky mess. Most importantly, he started using English bottles (stronger than French ones) and Spanish cork (up until then oil-soaked hemp had been used… Yum…!) to bottle his “crazy wine.” This enabled better and safer transportation - which in turn, helped drive its soaring popularity.

So… Drink up my friends! À VOTRE SANTÉ!!!