Dear Publisher,
Excuse the impersonal greeting, but I am sending this along to quite a few of you bow-tied literary types and I really can’t be bothered looking up all your names, can I? As someone already deep into the first draft of a blockbuster tell-all, I think all that research would be rather a waste of my time. I knew you’d agree.
I am, of course, well-known around the civilized world, and while I am sold under various glamorous brand names, you may just call me Champagne, or even Champers, as my many British friends choose to do.
I admit that I am by now grown rather long in the tooth, but those who know me best swear that I remain as fresh, lively and effervescent as at any point in my long and colorful life And it is precisely the richness of many decades spent both in and out of bottle that I intend to chronicle in my new memoir, Ballgowns, Blackguards and Bubbles: Intimate Recollections of a Sparkling Career. Such is the working title, at least. You may have other ideas.
It’s true that Mother taught me never to fizz and tell, but what did she know? A thoroughly commonplace little country wine as she was couldn’t imagine the times I’ve had. But I digress. The point is, I’ve been around the block and back. What follows is a sneak peek at a few of the topics I plan to pop the cork on — things your readers don’t know about me, wrongly thought they knew about me and (best of all) always wanted to know about me. To descend to particulars . . .
The early 17th century knew and loved me as Silery — a still, rather than fizzy wine. And so I might have remained. But I had other plans.
Like many destined for greatness, I was discovered by accident, when a disreputable group of young cut-ups at the court of King Charles II, circa 1685, cracking open a barrel of Sillery with which to moisten their nightly carouse and finding it alive with CO2 leftover from fermentation, had the nerve to start ordering it that way. It was my first big break.
Here’s a juicy tidbit you’ll surely appreciate: Dom Perignon not only didn’t invent me, he spent a good part of his life as cellarmaster at the abbey of Hautvilliers here on my homeground intent on keeping bubbles out of the wine made there. Truth be told, the old killjoy’s efforts just made me more determined than I otherwise might have been. I do feel that the contest with D.P did something to put an edge on my already feisty character.
I admit to being difficult to deal with as a youngster. Immature as I was, I took delight in bursting the weak glass bottles in which they endeavoured to confine me. I’m sort of sorry for the trauma and maiming, I guess, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, as I was, I’m quite certain, the first to observe.
Later, when they succeeded in getting my in-bottle pressure right and newfangled, coke-fired furnaces produced stronger glass bottles, I became marginally less lethal.
Of what I think of as my halcyon days, I shall have much to say. Belle Epoque France was, frankly, a blast. Booted, spurred and side-whiskered cavalry officers sabered my corks and Their Lordships sipped me from Their Ladyships’ (and sometimes Their Mistress-ships’), slippers, which practice, I have to admit, did nothing to enhance either my aromatics or delicate, hard-won mousse. Still, as you say in America: Them were the days.
And if this isn’t spicy enough, more lubricious readers will revel in learning that I have always been very very good in bed, as my old paramour Winston Churchill can attest — having spent most mornings battling Nazis from his four poster while sipping Pol Roger vintage (his fave). Far too little has been made of my contributions to the war effort.
I trust these few selected anecdotes will serve to pique your interest in what will surely be a memoir for the ages. Napoleon Bonaparte, Marcel Proust, Cole Porter, Mick Jagger — they’re all here and all yours for an appropriately generous advance.
My agent will be in touch.
Bisoux,
Champagne