Champagne Alfred Gratien in Jeroboam with Nicolas Jaeger, Cellar Master

"Using excess as a remedy is one of the finer things in the art of living," Friedrich Nietzsche claimed, and this Alfred Gratien is a very fine thing to recommend. Even on the verge of excess.

The specialist for fine handles not only likes the size of the bottle, but also the assemblage: 45 percent Chardonnay, 25 percent Pinot Noir, the rest Meunier.

And by now you know the journalistic crackpots who announce in Champagne that you won't get very far with the Meunier.

Aromatic power combines with exotic freshness. A wine for a situation in which things go on immodestly and definitively to the point of excess.