Vacation in Paris Blog

Champagne - Bubble Bliss

Places To Visit - Posted on Sep 22,2025 by Hampton*Jan

Feeling a bit dull after a day of site-seeing in Paris? Here’s a guaranteed way to get your sparkle back: head to Bubble Bliss, the Champagne bar and restaurant in the heart of Paris’s Left Bank. Just walking past the bottles of Champagne in the entry is enough to perk you up and make you eager for what’s ahead – a space dedicated to the mission of sharing the joys of Champagne.

Marina Nesterenko, the English-speaking Russian woman who founded this Champagne mecca, wants to make sure the entire world knows what an outstanding wine Champagne is, and she has created a list of more than 300 Champagnes to make sure you get the message. All the great Champagne houses are there, but the real fun of Bubble Bliss is in the massive list of grower Champagnes, the small individual producers who make Champagnes stamped with personality and individuality.

Let me give you an example: Champagne Aurore Casanova. This is a Champagne made by someone who really understands what it means to be effervescent: a ballerina! This Aurore pirouetted to Champagne-making after a career on the stage that took her to the major cities of the world, then brought her home to the smallest of the grand cru villages in Champagne – Puisieulx – where she and her husband rented land from their vigneron families and began creating their own Champagne based on organic and biodynamic principles. It is a perfect Champagne to order when your feet are tired, and your back is aching; ballerinas know about those things! But also because it is a bubbly that needs a few minutes to be at its best, so first do a little warm-up at the bar(re). Grab your glass of Aurore Casanova, then go sit down, take a deep breath or two, and get really comfortable and relaxed. Okay, now it’s time - both you and your Champagne are ready. Sip and let the sparkle begin!

This, however, is only one of the special Champagnes produced in small quantities that make the Bubble Bliss list the gem it is. Each has its own story to tell, but the Bubble Bliss staff loves to share those stories with customers. One they like to tell is about Gaspart Brochet, who was a professional graphic artist before inheriting tiny plots of land on the fabled Montagne de Reims. He gives his vines the same detailed attention he gave to designs he created on paper, and he does so bio-dynamically. Like the artist he still is, he produces limited editions. One cuvée was only 640 bottles, but that is not unusual for this very creative young vigneron. He has not totally forsaken his previous career and now designs his own labels. Each of them is worth soaking off the bottle and framing.

These two Champagnes are just the beginning. Every week Marina offers a list of 10 Champagnes you can try by the glass. Next week there will be 10 others. There will be a big house or two among them, but the rest will be the unique bubblies that come from independent producers like Aurore Casanova and Gaspard Brochet. Most are also available to buy by the bottle at Bubble Bliss so the sparkle can continue at home.

And if wonderful Champagne is not enough, Bubble Bliss has wonderful food to go with it – food created by chef Damien Dussac to enhance Champagne and be enhanced by it. Champagne, Marina will remind you, is, after all, a wine - a wine that goes with all kinds of food. That includes pizza, my favorite match-up. It’s great for celebrations, Marina says, celebrations like Tuesday, for instance, or Thursday. Wednesday, too, even Monday - and especially today.

Bubble Bliss is at 3, rue de Bourbon le Château, 75006 Paris, and it’s open Monday to Sunday from 4 p.m. until midnight.

Photo ©Bubble Bliss official site

**************************************************************************************************

Our latest guest bloggers - Don and Petie Kladstrup

Don and Petie Kladstrup are authors of two best-selling books, the first being Wine and War: the French, the Nazis and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure, a best-seller that has been optioned for a motion picture. Their second book dealt with World War I: Champagne: How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times. There's also Champagne Charlie: the Frenchman Who Taught America to Love Champagne. All books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Check out Petie's latest book - The Last Empress of France: the Rebellious Life of Eugénie de Montijo, which has just been published by HarperCollins.

Don and Petie are former journalists. Don was a award-winning foreign correspondent for CBS and ABC Television News. Petie worked for several mid-western newspapers before serving as an assistant to the American ambassador to UNESCO in Paris. They are the parents of two daughters and have lived in Paris since 1978, splitting their time between the city and their country home in the south of France.