Sara Underdown on Living Your Best Champagne Life

December 10, 2023|Sara Underdown.

Woman in a gold dress holding a Louis Roederer champagne bottle in a stylish bar

From summers in Reims sipping rare champagnes to experiencing the real side of harvest, Sara Underdown's love of champagne has given her a life to savour. Originally published in the September issue of SA Life Magazine.

I don’t quite remember the first glass of champagne I ever had, even though they say you will never forget it. But it was most likely Moët et Chandon or Veuve Clicquot for no other reason than it was the one someone handed to me.

Wine wasn’t exactly running through my blood. I grew up in Queensland, on the Gold Coast, so my early memories were fuelled by cheap sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, shared between budget conscious university mates.

In fact, I never had much of an appetite for it until I moved to Adelaide in 2009. It’s fair to say I was wine illiterate, which felt even more so when compared with the locals – who always seemed to have a remarkably high wine-IQ. But it was the beauty of being so close to South Australia’s dazzling wine regions that lured me into a life of food and wine that would eventually lead to Champagne – both the region and the wine.

My nascent palate craved more each time I tasted, not only for the sensory, but for knowledge of provenance and people. Each bottle represented a window into time and place, which is what makes wine so magic!

My sliding doors moment came during a trip to Europe in 2011. A three-day adjunct from Paris to Champagne and things snapped into focus for me. Champagne - that otherworldly wine with its hypnotic bubbles, heady aromatics and je ne sais quoi – was much more diverse and complex than I had ever imagined…and there was nothing like it. But beyond the bubbles that scaled the length of every glass, there was something more that captured my heart. The coolest of wine producing climates and chalkiest of lands was unique to the region of Champagne, contributing unparalleled concentration, freshness, salinity and finesse. Today, the region’s legacy is forever enshrined by their UNESCO world heritage listed crayères, essentially chalk mines with cathedral-like ceilings, once excavated by engineering Romans harking back to the 4th Century A.D.

Ruinart, Taittinger, Charles Heidsieck, Veuve Cliquot, Pommery and Martel are all custodians of these incredible chalk super-structures which house millions of champagne bottles, in perfectly cool and humid conditions, during unhurried years of maturation. I have visited most of them, but Taittinger’s prestige, Comtes de Champagne, which is a personal favourite of mine, is particularly special because it finds its natural resting place here under the beautiful remains of the 13th century Saint-Nicaise Abbey.

A year later, during my second visit to Champagne in 2012, a chance meeting with Louis Roederer’s chef de caves, Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, during harvest, became another pivotal moment. I was a relative nobody and yet another person with a love for champagne, but he must have seen something in me that others didn’t.

For more than a decade I have been the recipient of his generosity of time and mentorship, as well as opportunities, that I am convinced would not have existed otherwise. With Jean-Baptiste I have experienced the inner-sanctum of making Champagne’s most exclusive rosé – Cristal Rosé – an invitation-only (if not slightly tongue in cheek) gathering of international media for a two-day #CRPC (Cristal Rosé Picking Club) experience during harvest. The day is always followed by lunch at the Maison’s country manor in Aӱ with a parade of Louis Roederer’s finest Cristal Rosé cuvées, our reward for the day, the oldest I’ve tasted was from 1976.

Moments such as these have been incredibly formative in my own champagne journey, connecting me deeply into the wine beyond being purely celebratory, which really is the key to living a champagne life.

I return to Champagne as often as I possibly can between family and work commitments – at least twice a year. It has also been important in earning my ‘rite of passage’ with the Champenoise, who are some of the most hospitable people, many now I call dear friends. With them I have experienced the real story of champagne, which has become my professional mantra, and always comes back to community and friendship. In summer, you can find me at a friend’s backyard barbeque in Reims over multiple bottles of something I’ve never tried before. During harvest, I’ll be eating a thoughtfully prepared lunch by local ladies who delight in feeding the pickers food from the recipes of their grandmothers. But more often, you can find me at the greatest Maisons and finest domaines enjoying intimate visits and gastronomic affairs.

It’s an immense privilege to have access to otherwise inaccessible people within an industry that has remained relatively closed to the public.

This role I take seriously and feel an enormous sense of responsibility to communicate back to thirsty audiences in Australia through education, writings and beautiful dinners. It also inspired me to start VINE & BUBBLE in 2018, a boutique information source and experiences dedicated exclusively to champagne.

What I want to convey, more than anything to champagne lovers, is that it’s possible to live our best champagne life, every day. That may sound pretentious, but I say it with sincerity and pragmatism. Because champagne isn’t just for special occasions – and how tragic if we only waited until then! I find more luxury when enjoying champagne in the simplicity of every day, which reminds me of one of my favourite quotes; ‘I like to enjoy champagne on a special occasion. Sometimes that special occasion is that I have a bottle of champagne in my fridge.’

It’s true - I never hesitate to open a bottle on a Tuesday night, just because. It’s about making the ordinary seem extraordinary.