The winemaking expert with a sparkle in his eye

Tasting champagne in the morning, at noon and again at night is an occupational hazard for Veuve Clicquot winemaker Francois Hautekeur, who travels the world championing the brand. But he has no complaints and even enjoys a drop on his days off.

"Even when I don't work I drink champagne very often because, for me, it's the best," he says.

Based in Reims, France, the house of Veuve Clicquot has been creating fine champagnes since 1772. Its flagship cuvee is the Brut Yellow Label with notes of fruit and brioche that, Hautekeur says, as well as being "a fantastic aperitif", is the perfect accompaniment to breakfast.

"This morning we tasted Yellow Label at 8 o'clock. It was good because of the pastry aromas. It was very good," he says, adding that vintage champagne would not have worked as well.

"Yellow Label is fresh. You have fresh fruits, you have pastry [for breakfast]. So it goes well."

Hautekeur considers himself privileged to serve on the Veuve Clicquot tasting committee, a panel of 10 wine experts whose job is "to taste all the base wines and reserve wines and to build each cuvee".

With responsibility for perpetuating the house's champagne style, they're charged with recreating Yellow Label's same distinctive flavour year after year. "So that's the great challenge of the tasting committee - to make it every year the same. Different grapes, different years - nature is very different from one year to another in champagne."

Pinot noir dominates the Yellow Label blend, which also includes chardonnay and pinot meunier. "The red grape viscosity balanced with the elegance and crispness of the chardonnay makes the wine easy to drink. That's what Veuve Clicquot aficionados love."

The inclusion of precious reserve wines from earlier years ensures the all-important continuity of the style.

The process of champagne making is full of romance, tradition - and painstaking attention to detail. Veuve Clicquot hires over 1200 grape-pickers to harvest the fruit, 95 per cent of which grow within either grands or premiers cru - which have the finest vines in a region of very fine vines. Then comes the pressing, resting, testing, fermentation (in about 800 stainless steel vats), tasting, blending, drawing, bottling, a second fermentation (in which the wine acquires its bubbles), ageing, riddling (to collect the sediment), disgorging, corking and wiring, resting, inspecting and finally labelling.

Veuve Clicquot champagne is aged underground in 24km of medieval chalk tunnels 20m below the soil. Non-vintage is aged for 30 months; vintage for at least five years.

Veuve Clicquot has three non-vintage champagnes in its range; as well as Brut Yellow Label, there is rose and demi-sec - a dessert wine. Its top-of-the-line vintage cuvees are made only in years in which the harvest is especially good. The 2002 vintage is currently on the market.

"The wine is more structured with a good ageing potential. It's typically the wine you can have in the good restaurants with a meal." Hautekeur describes this champagne as "more gastronomic" and says it can be served with "sophisticated recipes" and even rich, creamy sauces.

The most prestigious cuvee of the house is La Grande Dame, with a recommended retail price of $249.

"I would say in-mouth it's lace with silk; there is the kind of structure of lace but with softness of the silk. The bubbles are creamy and the thinnest that you can imagine. And at the end it's a long, long finish. So in-mouth it's like a caress," says Hautekeur. "Food and wine pairing is very subjective but I love, for instance, scallops with citrus with Grand Dame '98."

A rose champagne is created when red wine from Bouzy is added to the base wine.

"So it becomes pink in colour and then we make the second fermentation in the bottle and so it is rose champagne."

And on which occasions should we drink this pink bubbly? "When you're in love. It's very romantic. Less romantically, it also goes well with duck."

As a qualified oenologist (an expert in the science of winemaking) Hautekeur has responsibility for education and technical training at Veuve Clicquot. He considers the aroma of champagne to be as important as the taste.

"Of course, we are perfumers. If a wine does not smell of anything it's boring or if it just smells of one thing, it's boring. What we love is the richness of the aromas," he says. "I like saying that the wine is telling you stories. It does not smell always the same. It's complex: it's mineral, it's flowery, it's a bit of pastry, fruits."

And, although he's far too well-mannered to say, it's fair to assume that Hautekeur doesn't really rate fizzy wines made elsewhere in the world.

"I work in the great house of champagne. I live in the Champagne region. Perhaps my palate gets used to Veuve Clicquot ... so I have to admit that no, I don't drink other sparkling wines."