I was recently put in contact with someone Chéri knows, who is starting a business online that will greatly please champagne lovers! It is to be called Mon Champagne, and will hopefully open up its virtual doors very soon. The concept is to promote and sell champagne from talented yet little-know producers, or as we should call them “créateurs” as the are like craftsmen (and women) who take the craft of making champgne to heart. Mon Champagne will be not just selling and promoting their bubblies, they will also be explaining the different “personalities” of each vineyard, brand and bottle. I am thrilled for this website to open and there are three things main I love about their concept :

• First, Uuuuuh, it’s champagne. What’s NOT to LOVE!?!
• Second, I love promoting the “little (talented) guy”! These vineyards are not the multi-million euro branded ones, but can be just as good.
• And third, it offers a great (and tested) product at a fair price. A real price. Yaaaay! Champagne for everyone!!!!

The format that this champagne will mostly be available in on this new on-line store, is a three-bottle format, offered in a re-usable plastic bag that has been custom designed for Mon Champagne. (Made while especially keeping in mind people transporting it on public transportation, or having to carry it around. Très smart!).

I received the December special, three-bottle-format from the Tristan H. http://www.tristanh.fr vineyards. There was a blanc de blancs, an extra-brut that was a bit drier, and a rosé champagne. The 3 bottle format will be sold for 55€. A great deal for good quality champagne (normally a good bottle of halfway decent champagne goes for about 30€ to 40€ a bottle (like a bottle of the low end Mercier or Taittinger is around 29€), so this is certainly a bon plan champagne!). And even better is the option to have a regular monthly champagne subscription (I LIKE the sound of that!) for the same amount, and each month the vineyard of the month will be sent to you with three bottles!

So, well I obviously was not going to taste all this champagne by myself, and Chéri is not a big fan of the bubbly drink (yeah, I know…don’t ask, I don’t know why…), so I planned a girls’ night in with a few friends, and went out to get some decadent delights to go along with these bottles.

We started out with the blanc des blancs and paired it with some marinated lox on mini toasts and olives.

It was good. The wine tasted like a chardonnay wine with bubbles. Which is in essence, what it is. It was lovely and nice, but I think our taste buds were expecting that dry sharp popping champagne taste, and this wine was a bit more bold than we were expecting (although it was not too bold mind you). A lovely bottle, but I think I should have married it with a different accompaniment, like smoked duck breast perhaps, a meat with a bolder flavor than lox. Perhaps it should have been paired with the foie gras which came next.

We moved on to the next course : foie gras with confit onions and fig jam (on more mini toasts) with the bottle of brut.

THIS bottle satisfied ALL our our desires for a dry bubbly nectar that felt sharp on the tongue and crisp going down the throat. And we enjoyed immensely the pairing of it with divine and delicious duck liver fat foie gras. This second bottle and dish had all the delicious decadence hat I had been craving ever since having sent out my text message invitations to the girls!

The third and final bottle : the pink champagne, was paired with three desserts : toasted waffles that were topped with a vanilla apple jelly with frosted chestnuts and gold flakes in it; then Ladurée macarons, and finally champagne wafer cookies that are like light and crunch ladyfingers. The rosé was light and dry, not sweet and fruity, which was GREAT for me. I am not a big fan of sweet rosé wines or champagnes. Plus the desserts were already sugary enough!

Those ladyfinger wafers…are so fun! You dip them in your champagne, let it fizz for a second, then bite into the soaked cookie . The cookie holds the champagne in all the minuscule nooks and crannies and as a result your bite of cookie is also a bite of bubbly! So delightful!

I also want to take a moment to talk to you about this incredible jelly that I put on the waffles. From the Comptoir des Confitures, created by award winning Catherine Manoël, this jam company creates some of the most decadent, innovative and mouth-watering jams and jellies I have ever heard of, and they are purchased and gobbled up by the ultra wealthy. She is considered to be the jam-maker of billionaires! Her confections are stocked on private jets and the like. But for all the pomp and circumstance, these traditionally made jams are created with pure fruit, no chemical products, and they range from the ultra nostalgic flavors of your childhood to the most original trendy and tantalizing tastes that the most demanding Parisian hipster foodie could imagine! And while I may not be one of those, we were still mesmerized by the sweet sensation of the jellied fruit.

Really, there is only one way to describe it : decadant.

Girls’ night in was a fabulous treat! I may have to male a regular habit of this (Maybe with a Mon Champagne subscription!!!) 😉

Many thanks to Mon Champagne for providing the bubbly, and offering me and my friends a lovely way to spend time together!

Santé!