When Playboy.com asked me to put together a primer on Champagne (for the NYE celebration holiday season), I was sporting a seriously large sh*t-eating grin on my face.

I mean, c’mon… the homework involved in that requires me to raid the sample pool for all of the Champers I could get my grubby little paws on; and while there are many strong contenders outside of the region, when it comes to sparkling wine, a strong argument can be made that Champagne still reigns supreme. Just try finding wine geeks who don’t like it… (now there’s a needle-in-the-haystack treasure hunt for you).

Put another way: there are far worse assignments, okay?

Interestingly, while the annual New Year’s Eve run-up on sparkling wine articles was in full-force (I think there were more of those in the last week of December than Lindsay Lohan rehab stints), the most interesting piece of bubbly news at the close of 2012 came from NPR, of all places…

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This past September while touring the less-appreciated side of Bordeaux as a guest of Planete Bordeaux, we wrapped up our jaunt with a boat ride, before which we tossed back some cured meats and a lot of tasty and inexpensive Bordeaux whites and rosés, and during which we tossed back some oysters and a lot of tasty and inexpensive Bordeaux whites and rosés, and after which we ate dinner at a modest-but-quite-good restaurant along the water (and tossed back a lot tasty and inexpensive Bordeaux reds, whites and rosés).

But before you fly into a curious jealous rage and/or hate on me for even accepting a trip like that, it should be noted that in typical organized-by-the-French fashion, this little aquatic jaunt sounds more idyllic than it is when manifested in the context of, well, reality. We had to roll up pant legs carry shoes and socks and wade through the crisp, September-chilled waters to climb into the boat, a well-maintained but on-the-small side craft that would have suited four people a lot better than it did ten. I like to drink, and I like to east, but I don’t like to sit on wood planks for long periods of time (thought I gave that one up when I decided to stop going to Catholic Sunday mass regularly).

Once the wine and oysters are flowing, however, it’s easy enough to forget the relatively mild inconveniences and the Autumn bite, so I’m not complaining here. I’ll let the photos do the talking.

However, taken as a whole, a leisurely open-aired boat ride is not the environment that’s conducive to any kind of formal critical assessment, which doesn’t matter anyway when Academy Award-winner Marion Cotillard is dining (with entourage) a few tables away from you, and someone (in this case, Marc Milhade, of Chateau Recougne) brought along a 1959 red that their grandfather made. At which point things become decidedly more… awesome…

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When most people hear the name of a French Chateau, they conjure up in their mind’s eye a scenario that probably looks a lot like what

Féret-Lambert is like in real life: green hills punctuated by vineyards bulging with ripe, juicy Merlot grapes; a large, picturesque house dating from the 1700s, located a stone’s throw from Saint-Emilion in the French countryside.

But when I hear the words Féret-Lambert, I have near-instant recall of something else entirely; I think about… tomato pie.

[ I also think about the dog that tried to eat my water bottle. More on that little bugger later. ]

I think about the fourth generation family that now runs the show there, yes; and I think about some overachieving Merlot-based wine, too, of course. But the heart of the mater to me was the tomato pie we had at lunch when I visited Féret-Lambert in September, as a media guest of Planete Bordeaux.

For the uninitiated in Mid-Atlantic “Little Italy” cuisine, tomato pie is, essentially, margherita pizza without the cheese. But as with any cuisine, there are endless variations, and as a kid who loved tomatoes grown into an adult who loves tomatoes, I have tried just about all of them. Thin, flaky crusts with fresh baked tomato and a hint of sauce on top; thick, floppy, focaccia-style bread with a gargantuan amount of sloppy, garlic-filled red sauce oozing of the top; hearty dough that’s soft in the center, crispy on the bottom, and with a light coating of embedded, seasoned tomatoes and a thin layer of sauce that curls at the thick crust and bakes ever-so-slightly into the top layer of the bread (that last style is the equivalent of tomato pie mouthgasm for me). Inexpensive to make, but tough to do really well, and a little (literal) slice of luxury for a boy living in the “upper end of the lower middle class.”

So when it comes to tomato pie – from the utterly banal to the downright succulent – I’ve just about had it all.

And I can therefore tell you with at least a semi-educated opinion that Féret-Lambert makes a mean tomato pie; more pie-like than pizza-like, flaky crust and ultra-fresh tomatoes baked up together with enough near-perfection to give a Little Italy expat a deep sense of homecoming. And with the Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes that they’re pulling off of the thirteen-or-so hectares of vines that they cultivate there, Féret-Lambert is also making a mean, budget-minded Bordeaux red to go with it…

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In high school, I had a math teacher who used to tease us when we were timid in class about providing an answer that should have been obvious. He would hold out his lanky arms in the fashion of scales, feigning the weighing of agonizing choices, while muttering, “Sex? Or… death? Sex… or death? I can’t decide!!”

So when I was in Bordeaux this past September (a media guest of Planet Bordeaux), and oenologist Vincent Cruège asked my group if we wanted to meet André Lurton, I had a flashback to those high school days. Now near 90, Lurton – apart from being a near-legend in Bordeaux winemaking – has been Mayor of Grézillac, a WWII soldier, a Military Cross recipient, member of the Legion of Honour, a Knight of the Agricultural Order of Merit, and a collector of… tanks (not steel tanks, though there are plenty of those on the property, but the kind of tanks that shoot explosive shell rounds).

“Sex? Or Death?”

Hell yeah, I wanted to meet Lurton. I’d want to meet him by virtue of the tank collection alone, actually.

And so it was that our tour of Chateau Bonnet, headed by Lurton’s daughter Denise Moulle (whose husband, Jean-Pierre, was head chef at Chez Panisse for more than twenty years, but as far as I’m aware didn’t cook for us during this visit… the audacity…!) was to conclude with a visit from the tank-collecting legend himself, who basically heard that we were a group of bloggers and wanted to meet the new blood in the wine biz. It would also conclude with the popping of the cork on one of Lurton’s rarer Monbazillacs – something I didn’t know when we toured the grounds on a chilly, wet Autumn mid-morning, but something else I certainly wouldn’t have turned down if it had been offered (talk about “Sex or Death?”)…

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