Not that you really needed tempting…

I usually only get out to the Champagne once or twice a year, but I was able to spend a week or so out in my soul home this May, as part of the birthday celebrations for a certain big round number (gasp). And of course what visit to the Champagne would be complete without a trip along the way to see my old haunts at the Veuve Clicquot tasting room in Reims? Some of my friends had never been, and if you haven’t either here are a few photos to tempt you. Though when champagne is on offer, who really needs tempting? Some photos here of the underground caves that run for hundreds of miles beneath the city of Reims. They were used by the knights Templar for all sorts of shenanigans in the Middle Ages, by radicals during the French Revolution (and I’ll bet monarchists too), by clever winemakers who knew that they were the perfect temperature and humidity for storing bubbles, and by regular folks trying to escape the massive bombings of the city of Reims during the First World War. You can see in one of the photos here the “street signs” painted onto the walls of the caves during the war, giving people directions to the underground, war-time hospital station. Reims is 45 minutes on the TGV out of Paris, and for the first time in ages and ages all the scaffolding is finally off the cathedral of Notre Dame in Reims as well. It’s the first time I’ve seen it–or anyone has in a long while–in its restored beauty. Will be back out in August, and the vignerons say that due to the warmer than usual weather the harvest will be a full month early. Perfect timing.

Shipwrecked Veuve goes for $41K

Breaking news. Know you’re all on the edge of your seats. Shipwrecked Veuve bottle at auction went for $41K. Apparently you’ve all let me down and really aren’t planning to surprise me. Huh. Wow. I mean, unless someone moved to Singapore and hasn’t mentioned it yet? LOL.

Veuve Clicquot Bottles on Auction Tomorrow

Last week in the Champagne, I was able to get my first–and hopefully not my last–glimpse of one of wine history’s most fabulous finds in recent history: one of the shipwrecked Veuve Clicquot bottles. We all know by now that these sunken treasures were found by divers on the bottom of the sea in the Baltic, off the coast of the Åland Islands of Finland. The most recent historical evidence suggests that they date from the 1830s or 1840s–and that means that they are bottles the Widow Clicquot herself would have crafted. The name of the sunken ship hasn’t yet been discovered, and until then the precise date, their destination, and the name of one seriously disappointed purchaser will all remain on hold.

Two of those bottles will be auctioned off tomorrow, June 3, along with several lots of rare Veuve Clicquot vintages offered by the maison. Proceeds will go to charity, and the auction house Acker Merrall & Condit, have set a minimum price of 10,000 euros for the lots. But experts anticipate that they may go as high as a 100,000 euros a bottle. Needless to say, I am actively encouraging all my friends to buy me a bottle.

For those of us who can’t make it to the Åland Islands this week for the auction (and what, miss the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic in New York?) but want to see one of the special bottles, one will be on display–this year only–at the Veuve Clicquot maison in Reims, France. You have your holy grail out there maybe. I know where to find mine. ;–)

Lagerfeld’s Book-Scented Perfume

Thanks to my friend, author Hannah Holmes, for calling my attention to Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld’s plans to launch a book-scented perfume. According the press reports: “Paper Passion, which will be sold inside a hardcover book with the pages hollowed out to hold the flacon, will be developed with Berlin perfumer Geza Schön, who told the paper that ‘the fragrance will have a fatty note,’ probably along the lines of linoleum, and that he was taking his inspiration from the smell of printed and unprinted paper.”

I write a book on Chanel’s No. 5 perfume. Lagerfeld is inspired to create a book-scented perfume. Coincidence? LOL.

Shipwrecked Veuve Clicquot up for auction

Acker, Merrall & Condit and the Government of Åland Present A Historic Shipwreck Champagne Auction…

The shipwrecked Veuve Clicquot from the early nineteenth century goes on sale at last.

I’m not absolutely, totally sure where Åland is, beyond the general Baltic region. But there’s one thing I am certain about–never in my life have I coveted anything so purely as this. Just one bottle.

Well, let’s make it two. We’ll drink one and save one. I mean, no point in dreaming on the cheap…

Widow Clicquot in The New Yorker

Widow Clicquot in The New Yorker, where Gayle Tzemach Lemmon clearly has THE best reading taste. See the article at http://tinyurl.com/3myyd

Talking No. 5 with Tom Ashbrook, NPR On Point

An hour-long conversation with On Point’s host Tom Ashbrook and questions from callers, all on the subject of The Secret of Chanel No. 5:

“We see style as a signifier of a moment in time, a cultural era. Same for artworks, for cuisine and changing tastes, for the music that reaches our ears. What about scent?

For a big chunk of the last century, the single most celebrated creation in the scent world has come in a bottle labeled Chanel No. 5.

As a cultural artifact, it’s loaded. With jasmine, rose petal, musk. With Madison Avenue and Marilyn Monroe. With orphanage, czarina, convent laundry, Moulin Rouge, Nazis, and American GIs coming home from war.

The story of Coco Chanel and Chanel No. 5.” –Tom Ashbrook

Chanel No. 5 at Musée d’Orsay Paris in January

From January 6-28 in Paris, there’s one other tourist attraction to add to your list in Paris. Sort of. A huge sequined silhouette of the celebrated Chanel No. 5 bottle will grace the facade of the Musée d’Orsay. Contrary to urban legend, the iconic bottle never was actually part of the MOMA’s 1959 exhibit on The Package. Only the perfume’s black-and-white box made it into that collection. And the bottle still hasn’t quite made it inside the walls of the Musée d’Orsay either. But hanging on those walls along the exterior might be just as good, and it’s certainly a lot more visible.

Talking No. 5 with Jacki Lyden on NPR’s All Things Considered 1/1/2011

From NPR author interview on The Secret of Chanel No. 5

The Chanel boutique, at 31 Rue Cambon in the heart of Paris, is a glittering shrine to fashion and fragrance. And that fragrance, of course, is Chanel No. 5, the world’s most famous perfume.

Supposedly, someone somewhere in the world buys a bottle every 30 seconds. Marilyn Monroe notoriously claimed to wear nothing to bed but a few drops of Chanel No. 5.

Cultural historian Tilar Mazzeo has written a new book about this legendary scent, The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume.

Secret of Chanel No. 5 on Barnes and Noble Long List

From the Long List:

The Secret of Chanel No. 5

Tilar Mazzeo’s history of the creation and unparalled international success of Coco Chanel’s signature scent travels from Paris to New Jersey to the pastoral flower plantations where the raw ingredients of the perfume originated. What was Chanel’s secret? You’ll be surprised.