Dugas - Champagne baby: how one Parisian learned to love wine-and life-the American way

When I was a baby in Paris, my mother would dip her finger in champagne and rub it on my lips, to acclimate me to the taste and smell, she told people, because our family was from Champagne. I have no memory of this. The modern parent would be horrified. You are getting your baby drunk! You are giving her brain damage! But Im sure she did it in good fun, and I dont feel too much the worse for it.

My mothers grandparents cultivated our familys first vines in Champagne in the 1930s before the war, and good wine still comes from our vineyard (a small one not found in many guides). My paternal grandfather managed all the wine distribution that came through Bercy during the war. My father went in a slightly different direction, selling fine spirits throughout France. His brother, my Uncle Alain, is a respected vintner in the esteemed Chteauneuf-du-Pape geographic appellation of the Rhne Valley. Wine is most definitely in my blood.

So you might think I am some kind of wine princess, that I was schooled in everything there was to know about wine from the moment I could speak, that in my youth I could have recited the great vintages of France the way the child of the Church knows her catechism. Oh pfft, you say, no wonder she is writing about wine: Shes French! Her family is in the business! And you would be right about my family, but not about me. I dont deny that I grew up surrounded by wine. As a girl I watched my mother open a bottle of her familys champagne at nearly any excuse. A friend stopping by the house? Champagne! The sun coming out after a little rain? Alors! Champagne! But the truth is that I knew almost nothing about it, except that there was plenty in the pantry. My pedigree, as it were, came with no special understanding at all, simply proximity.

And so what it comes to is this, and I have no compunction about sharing it with you right away: entitlement is the very opposite of what makes for the most rewarding, most open experience of wine. Growing up, I drank only one kind of champagnemy familysand could not have described any other, or even what made ours any good (though it benefits from some of the best terroir of Champagne, in Ambonnay).

Being French is not the answer, either. While France, in my opinion, possesses the tradition and know-how to make the best wines in the world, that doesnt mean every French citizen can tell the difference between a Chablis and a Pouilly-Fum (just as, despite what I learned as a child, from the TV show Dallas, not every American knows how to herd cattle). Being French can, in fact, actually breed complacency. Ive seen plenty of my fellow countrymen and -women act a certain way to suggest theyre naturally gifted when it comes to wine, when that couldnt be further from the truth. Nationality alone is not enough.

Im a prime example. If youd told me as a little girl that I would one day operate my own wine bar and store, premised on the pleasures of French wine, Id have laughed out loud. It was the last thing I wanted to do, having grown up in a family like mine. And anyway, credentials guarantee nothingin life as in wine. By the time I was nearly finished with university, I was still nave about both. And I did not learn, really learn, what it means to love both until I left my family and my country at twenty-three, and moved to New York City.

This is the story I want to tell you.

Ive always had the unfortunate tendency to leap before I look. Its not very French of me, but I cant help it. So when my uncle pulled me aside after a family dinner in the summer of 2006 to offer me the chance to work in the U.S., I didnt say I would think about it or consult with others. I said yes. Hed heard I wanted to learn English, and he needed someone to work with his new American wine importer, which was based in New York. Never mind that to do the job well I would need a minimum of two things, neither of which I had: a minimal competency in the English language, and a much deeper understanding of French wine. Never mind that I had a boyfriend in Paris, Jules, who had already patiently waited for me as I studied in Spain for a year. Never mind also that my uncle needed someone for only the first six months of 2007, after which I would be on my own.

I said yes immediately, before I could think twice. Even my uncle was surprised; after a moment he asked if Id heard correctly that this would mean traveling around les tats-Unis