Bubbly Trip

It has been a good Champagne trip for us.  Almost everywhere we've gone, we've stumbled on some good bottles (by "stumbled" I mean "frequently looked for and found." The actual stumbling came later).

From discovering a halfway-decent sparkling wine maker in Marlborough (No. 1 Cuvee - French winemaker from Champagne relocated to New Zealand) -

- to finding this nice bottle at a dark little unlikely wine bar down an alley in Queenstown



where the young bartender pulled out the rest of their stash from the cooler for our perusal:

On Lizard Island, besides the obvious attractions of having their "house" Champagne be Louis Roederer (which means as much as we wanted within the definition of "all-inclusive") the crack staff there took time out to schedule a lesson to teach me how to sabre a bottle.

All in all, some great choices...so much for our resolution to eat pub food and drink beer throughout.