RICHARD JUHLIN hits 50,000 points in the Champagne Club app ! [read the full champagne story]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Summer is tough for a while longer. After our annual spring trip in the Champagne Club for VIP members, I’ve been almost constantly on the road despite Sweden showing its most beautiful side in this short period of the year. One of the trips did go to my favorite place in my home country, Gotland with its unique location and nature in some sort of hybrid version of Brittany, Tuscany and southern Swedish Skåne. There, Björnstierne and I travel around, usually with a well-chilled bottle in our luggage to do what we love most, Champagne Hiking. On the last evening, we always land in Vamlingbo Prästgård, where the famous bird artist Lars Jonsson receives the Champagne Club team and master chef Daniel Coyet prepares his favorite dishes for champagne. A magnificent spiritual encounter across cultural boundaries under the sign of champagne, rather than fog. The next longer trip was to Scotland, where Björnstierne, my son Henrik and my dear faithful champagne photographer Pål Allan made our most serious and spectacular film about Champagne Hiking so far. A pilot film you will see here in the Champagne Club as soon as we get a hold of a production company and know on which platform it will be placed.
We hope and believe that the Scottish environments and Pål’s beautiful photo will make you follow in our footsteps.
Tomorrow I go with my family to Ischia again with a suitcase full of prestigious champagnes and the day before yesterday I came home from a fascinating trip along Spain’s North Atlantic coast starting in San Sebastian and ending in Santiago de Compostela where we let the champagne flow in the scenic and abundantly green landscape between the star restaurant visits that oscillated between a jocular disappointment at elated Mugaritz to masterful culinary level at Akelare and above all Casa Marcial high up in the hard-to-reach mountain passes of the Picos de Europa. I don’t think I’ve ever worked out so hard during the day to burn off all the calories we consumed.
When we arrived at the final destination of our champagne-soaked pilgrimage, Santiago de Compostela, we had no idea that Per at our travel agency Go-in-Style had booked us into an unreal museum hotel with attractions almost on par with those found in the cathedral next door. Laurent-Perrier had sent two magnum Grand Siècle numbers 23 and 24 which were cold and waiting for us. Where would we enjoy them before watching Spain luckily and with the help of the referee eliminate host Germany from the European Football Championship? The rain poured down and the square outside was filled with tourists. My fellow hiker Henrik the Elder, who is a little braver than me, said that we can sit on the most beautiful of the four patios that the hotel houses until we are driven away. We never were. However, we all got a little religious when the sun broke through the cloud cover just as the corks were being lifted. This and many other moments were of course immortalized with a Champagne Friday film you will see in time. Notice then that my voice is a little shakier and more nervous than usual because I felt like we were going to be stopped at any moment with our filming in this sacred place.
However, that nervousness was blown away as soon as the unique euphoria of champagne intoxication took its toll.
When I was lying in bed as usual that night and posted my hike in the Champagne Hiking app, I saw that this hike was historic in more ways than one. I had just passed 50,000 points as the first shark! I actually thought that Björnstierne, Andrius or Daniel Larsson would finish before me, but they have to aim to get first to 100,000 instead. And all of you who haven’t yet started posting your champagne moments in the app. Please do it both for our sake and yours. If you have the slightest competitive instinct in you, you will not be able to help but notice how quickly you climb the rankings while the level of your enjoyment hits the roof.
// Sthlm
Richard Juhlin
