KEY POINTS:
A University of Otago wine tourism expert has been given an assignment likely to have people salivating with envy.
Dr Richard Mitchell has been selected by a leading French business school to visit France for six months and study the relationship between their champagne and its consumers.
Dr Mitchell, one of the world's leading wine-tourism academics, will depart mid-year to be the 2007 Visiting Professor to the Champagne Management Chair at Reims Management School in France.
He describes the trip as the chance of a lifetime and part of most people's romantic ideal. "Six months living in Champagne: what could be better? Everyone is extremely envious."
It is this very notion of the romantic appeal of France, wine and especially champagne that he plans to study while in Champagne.
Every second, nine bottles of champagne are opened across the world and more than 300 million bottles of champagne are produced annually by Champagne's wineries.
- NZPA
