Pop Stars

"You must climb the stairs to get your reward!" the guide tells us, so up we trudge to receive our choice of two glasses from among four champagnes, including a 1998 grand cru. While we sip, we ogle a humongous blending barrel -- 100,000 bottles' worth -- which was designed with elaborate art nouveau carvings by Emile Gall¿ for the 1904 World's Fair.

We could simply careen from one marquee champagne house to another -- Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot, Mumm and more are right in Reims -- but instead decide to atone for our imbibing and head for Reims cathedral. The towering gothic edifice is where the kings of France were crowned and, despite a World War I bomb, has stunning rose windows as well as some modern ones designed by Marc Chagall.

But wait. What are the guys in that stained-glass window doing? They're making champagne. Even in the cathedral, we can't escape the stuff. I suppose the sacramental wine has bubbles, too.

Vittorio wanders over to the tourist office and comes back with a list of three organic champagne producers. Not being fans of fertilizers or pesticides, we're curious to taste bubbly biologique (French for "organic"). We head for the nearest, in Hautvillers, which just happens to be the home and final resting spot of Dom Perignon. We're soon winding our way though vineyards and up to a tiny, ancient home squeezed into a narrow village lane.

"I have never used 'chemical artillery!' " 68-year-old Monsieur Bliard tells us as we're arrayed around a little wooden table in his foyer. A fire thaws out the chills we've developed after going an hour or so sans champagne. Vittorio, the human Rosetta Stone (Italian, English, French, German), is translating.

"There's a big difference between my champagne and others that aren't organic," Bliard claims. "One hour later, you won't have a stomachache with mine!" He tells us his 12 acres of vineyards have been certified organic for 35 years and, until the 1970s, they were farmed with a horse -- "the last in town."

Madame Bliard arrives from Sunday shopping and takes our visit in stride, admonishing her husband for not giving us any wine as she doles out glasses of 1997 demi-brut. It's sublime, a mesmerizing fount of minuscule bubbles in my flute.

Bliard walks us across the street to his cellars, where 62,000 bottles "sleep tranquilly," as he puts it. He grabs a bottle to show us how champagne makers used to disgorge sediment before the current method of freezing the bottleneck was developed. "Blam!" He has expertly tipped the bottle so a bubble gathered below the sediment, then opened it, blowing the sediment and cap into a barrel.

Turns out, he has popped a 1990 bottle. "At my age, there's no point in conserving the old wines," he says. "It's necessary to drink them!" He pours us flutes, adding, "It's my preferred medication. I have never been sick -- I don't even have a doctor!"

"To your health!" we reply, dutifully downing Monsieur's prescription. "Cheers!"

Gayle Keck last wrote for Travel about sailing the Mediterranean.