The next day, after a sunny day devoted to exploring Porquerolles by the sea, the idea is a great aperitif rather than a dinner. It will be in two stages, a young champagne with eclectic flavors, and an old champagne with foie gras.

For the first part there will be sardines, a delicious preserve of bonito in oil, the continuation of the sausage of pork and boar, tempuras of flowers of courgettes and onions, a spectacular cream of tomatoes and figs, another cream of black olives, poutargue and perhaps other things I forget. I open a Champagne Krug Grande Cuvée whose old label announces a wine of more than 25 years. But on the palate, this champagne of an acidity pronounced at the opening is of a great youth. Right from the start Sarah and I find that this champagne is better than the Krug 2000. It is very balanced, intense but without force, extremely flexible since it adapts to all these contrary flavors. It is a beautiful champagne of sun and lemon which becomes more and more round during its tasting.

Duck foie gras is a rare sweetness, which calls for pepper to excite it a little. The cork of Champagne Heidsieck Monopole Blue Diamond 1964 comes too easily, evoking a possible excessive oxygenation. The robe is dark, of a light mahogany. The perfume is extremely sensitive, refined, discreet, all in suggestion. On the palate, this champagne is an open door to a new world. Because no flavor has anything in common with the champagne that precedes it. This champagne is a pleasant composition with the strengths of a sauternes, melted and attenuated, with the rigor of a deep dry white, and with the synthesis of a champagne. Everything is tense, lively, combining all the facets of these three wines and one understands that it was named « diamond », because of these innumerable facets. This champagne is noble, complex, aerial but deep. It makes travel in unknown countries. And the foie gras is totally ideal.

Under the stars, with a marked milky way, this champagne made us prolong very late the pleasure of being together.