In a lifetime of standing in restaurants the question on everyone’s (wine-ready) lips is: Is it dry? Or, declaratively: I like it…dry, ‘very dry’, not-too dry. It’s never certain what the word means to anyone but it does have a meaning and its meaning is…science!

Burgundy is a place, a long, skinny place, and it’s in France. To wine people—ignore deniers—France is the center of the known universe and at its heart Burgundy lays claim to some deep emotion among its sometimes monomaniacal fans. Burgundy has devotees.

For forever and a day beer was yellow, it was fizzy, it got you buzzed and it was called beer. You could pick a label–any label!—and get: the same beer. There were pockets of otherness here and there but “beer” mostly meant yellow-fizzy. It wasn’t till the US West coast came along and blew the roof right off the thing that craft beer–

There is simply no escaping the festive-celebratory-congratulatory nature of Champagne. The word alone is adequate to prompt a smile. Champagne! is a place and a global brand and the one-time fad-drink of the warped royals of pre-revolutionary France and you can drink it. And YOU can drink it.