Champagne wine and Music

If you listen carefully, you can hear ‘the soul of wine singing the song of brotherhood
in every bottle’. With champagne, a delicate and sensitive ear such as Max Jacob’s could pick-up, ‘The same whisper in the sparkling glass, as the sea makes on the sand’. And there from, the expression ‘sabler le champagne’.
Maestro Remi Loisel* has captured the inherent musicality unleashed in uncorking some of the great French crus. In the following piece he conducts the legendary French Bottle Ensemble in a rousing interpretation of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This novel interpretation,‘in-bottiglia’, of a work dedicated to the’ King of wines’ can only rekindle the enthusiasm which greeted its première when an elegiac critic felt: ‘Radiant beams shoot within us, a longing for every pleasure rises up, while consuming love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with a full-voiced cry from all the passions. We are captivated beholders of the spirits.’
The moving finale:
‘Pop goes the cork,
Glou-glou goes the bottle,
Clink-clink go the glasses,
And thus goes our life.’
has since been adopted as the closing anthem at gatherings of the French vinous brotherhoods**. It captures the essence (which contrary to Sartre’s assertion precedes existence, or is it, indeed, as another, more radical, school of thought posits the very sine qua non condition of existence?), and conveys the deep meaning of the mysteries contained in the ‘bottle divine’.
A small group of champenois cognoscenti even postulates that the sound of a champagne cork popping, like the sound of one hand clapping, like the the tantric OM, is but a faint echo of the seminal Big Bang. That maybe pushing the cork a wee bit too far out.
The connaisseur knows that wine represents an all-encompassing sensory experience which comforts the dignity and provides solace to the human condition.
Moderato cantabile, vinum moderato potabile…

Caution

Any excess, even of champagne magnum et bonum, is deleterious to your health and may lead you to take leave of your senses; notably your common sense.

*With kind permission from the artist (www.chateauloisel.com). The maestro vouches that no animal was mistreated during the performance.
** Equal opportunity associations according to the Decree of Primidi Vendémiaire of 1793. Sisters are welcome too.