Champagne

Walking through a department store in Dallas in 1983, a sales wench grabbed my arm and sprayed this perfume on me without asking permission. I was _furious_. I fumed and complained for the next hour or two shopping, very upset, and then the most remarkable thing happened: I fell in love with Champagne. The fragrance was very bright with a nice balance of the citrus with florals and ginger, yes, almost nose-tingling in a champagne sort of way. Loved this very much. Picked up a bottle of this in online auction about a year ago, and the juice is old, not the same, but there is the faintest hint of what it used to be. I don't wear it, but I can smell it and remember. I believe if this we re-issued, it would still be in my regular rotation.

It's heartbreaking that this has become a "lost" perfume: a fading memory to the generation that saw it's launch, unknown to the generation that followed. I don't know that I would call it an oriental floral. I always thought it was more citrus/fruity(Peachy. VERY peachy.) than floral. It also didn't have that warm, thick, powdery sweetness that is the hallmark of an oriental. But who cares about labels? Just call it "exquisite". A healthy dose of ginger gave it a bright, sparkling quality -- it really did tickle the nose like a glass of champagne! If any perfume deserves a relaunch, "Champagne" is it.

Today in a shop I tried on Si by Giorgio Armani, and though it's not identical or just like Champagne, I think it is faintly reminiscent. Oddly, the only accords they have in common is wood notes and vanilla, but something about that blend helps my brain remember the scent of Champagne. Oh, how I miss it! I have an old bottle that is half-full, but it is a ghost of its former self. Glad to have that, but I'd love to get a good snout-full of the fragrance again!

I found a partial bottle of the parfum at a thrift store for a couple dollars. I am wearing it now and love it. It drys down beautifully but is difficult to describe. Fresh, spicy, powdery. Not citrus or floral to me. Love it! Wish there was more left in the bottle.

This has been discontinued, and it makes me so sad. I am ALWAYS asked what I'm wearing, when I wear it. I found that World Wide Perfume Oils carries a knock-off that is exactly the same. I'm saved!

The Night They Invented Champagne They Absolutely Knew That All We'd Want To Do Is Fly To The Sky On Champagne And Shout To Everyone In Sight That Since The World Began A Woman And A Man Have Never Been As Happy As We Are Tonight - Lerner & Loewe GIGI O my one whiff of this perfumed champagne in the small miniature dab on bottles which still sell on ebay is enough to make me giddy. Champagne by Germaine Monteil is a party every time you wear her. From the moment this fragrance opens, it's a big holiday party for adults. I've become intoxicated on this perfume and yet no police officer has ever pulled me over for drunk driving! Champagne is a fragrance whose fruit flavored top notes are not too dissimilar from the opening of Yves Saint Laurent Champagne (before the law suit, now selling as Yvresse) with the exception that Yves Saint Laurent's version is far more fruiter, in fact a deeper fruit concentrate and apricot nectar juice. Monteil's version is sweet, but lighter, more subtle, a smaller cup of fruit cocktail. What do you Yanks call them? Shots? A fragrance of a sweet but soft fruity mélange of orange & peach. Fresh & sweet as it begins, and bubbly with an absolutely delicious champagne. This unusual chemical note resembling champagne when you put your nose to the bottle is outstanding and I'd never smelled anything like it back in 1983 when this fragrance was launched. A ginger note & vanilla is also very reminiscent of sweet champagne. This smells like vanilla flavored fruit scented champagne & cocktails. You can't help but want to lift your glass & make a toast. Ca s'arrose! As the French say. A toast to perfume, wine, women & song! This perfume puts me in a happy mood. Even with all the troubles in the world and on a personal level, one wants to celebrate and make the most of life before it's all over. Champagne is a feel good fragrance. I let my hair down and dance to this perfume. As reviewer Gigi the Fashionista perfectly states, this is a New Years Eve fragrance, or a holiday December fragrance to wear to your Christmas parties. Sometimes I get a little Dr. Pepper scent out of it, maybe it's the tobacco note which comes off as peppery. The tobacco note is not masculine at all, in fact it's like a tobacco leaf, not a full on tobacco pipe. When this scent comes alive when it's new (and not old) there is something of a unisex tobacco pipe with vanilla & tobacco flavor to it and I can see why a male would have no problem wearing this. Certainly it is more unisex than the feminine Champagne by Yves Saint Laurent. YSL Champagne is far too fruited and feminine. The fact that Monteil's Champagne is composed of only 2 fruit notes: bergamot orange & peach, makes it less fruity and more alcoholic! The heart is supposedly floral with lotus & jasmine but I can't pick up on any flowers. This is too sweet as it is possible the florals are only there to provide this scent with a sweetness. I would never go as far as to call this an Oriental despite the lotus flower. It's far too European & alcoholic like a very delicious little cup of champagne with vanilla flavor. If it were truly an Oriental fragrance the notes would have included sandalwood, patchouli, vetiver, incense & so forth. Instead this thing is a delicious blend of fruit, spice (ginger) light florals, a little tobacco & lots of vanilla. This is so remarkable & different from any fragrance I've ever come across. When I wore this Champagne, I was married to that 2nd husband of mine (the worst) and we would both wear this when we were newly weds & were invited to many parties and soirees by distinguished professors and academics in London. Those nights are a blur now but I did enjoy this scent as my party perfume. Very few choices for a lighter softer "flirty" evening perfume back then as most evening wear colognes were Oriental and darker/smokier/masculine - i.e. Opium, Magie Noire, La Nuit. This was definitely meant to be worn at night but it was casual and light, informal & not meant to be taking too serious. Such a fun perfume. Please check it out vintage collectors!

A TOAST TO PERFUME Champagne by Germaine Montiel was another of the fragrances I found in the same "dresser of my dreams" in that townhouse where my mother was employed and that I explored as a child. I remember it being a night perfume, or maybe because it was evening when I observed my mother's employer spritzing it on herself. She had on a black evening gown and was going out with her husband to Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall to the symphony, the New York Philharmonic. She looked over her shoulder and caught me looking at her. Smells beautiful I said to her. She smiled and seemed amused. "You like my perfume?" she asked. "Yeah" I replied smiling. She walked up to me and spritzed it on my pajamas. "There you go now you can smell just like me tonight" she said. I wasn't expecting that but it was wonderful, like she was almost recognizing me as her equal. I didn't remember the smell later on. It seemed to disappear rather quickly. Must have been the eau de toilette LOL I have an old formula splash bottle mini and a spray that is about 1.7 ounces which I bought on ebay. This fragrance has been discontinued and you can't find it anywhere else but on ebay. I'm in love with this fragrance and wear it as an evening perfume. It's elegant, sweet and perfectly suited to formal dinners, formal evening gowns and fancy restaurants, fancy parties or a wedding. I'll break down the notes and do my best to describe this fragrance with the hope that whoever reads this review might want to buy it. Notes In Montiel's Champagne Head Notes: Peach, Bergamot, Ginger, Champagne Heart Notes: Jasmine, Lotus, Tobacco, Base Notes: Vanilla, Musk and Woods The composition is innovative. It was the 80's but they had such an amazing selection of accords for fragrances. Upon first whiff, after the aldehydes, I get a very delicious sweet peach very similar to the peach in Lanvin's Arpege. There's a gingery champagne, bubbly, sweet and intoxicating. It's the strongest note and it makes sense since this is the fragrance's moniker. The heart is a combination of flowers and tobacco, which give it a strangeness but it's still very pleasant. The jasmine is very prominent. The lotus is there but it's not very fragrant. It's just there. It seems to blend well with the aldehydes since lotus flowers are aquatic flowers (water lilies). The tobacco is intense and gives this frag a decidedly masculine aspect. It doesn't start off as being a cologne for men but it appear to turn into one. It's dark and smoky. Then it becomes musky and woodsy. The vanilla note keeps it from being too strong and softens it with a deliciousness that had already been there with the ginger and the champagne. All these notes really do go very well together. Like with Azzaro No. 9, this fragrance always reminds me of the 1980's and of a wealthy, well dressed couple in evening wear. This is so luxurious, heady and sweet. It really does wear like a good champagne. As such it also feels like you're celebrating, like you're giddy with the pleasures of love, romance and joy. It wears like you've been partying. It's definitely a NEW YEARS EVE FRAGRANCE. I will be wearing this on New Years Eve at the Hamptons on Long Island. This is a party fragrance. I love it. I know that no one else will be wearing this so I'll definitely stand out. This is absolutely gorgeous. It satifies my cravings for vintage perfumes. You will love it. Thank you Fragrantica for making this my most memorable and most fulfilling year of buying fragrances.

New Year's Eve Champagne Party Most of us vintage fragrance fans are familiar with Yves Saint Laurent's Champagne, renamed Yvresse after a law suit, but very few know about this charming vintage beauty by Germaine Monteil. This French cologne is a delicious vanilla based fragrance for parties, specifically New Years Eve, when we open up a bottle of champagne and dance the night away and kiss at the stroke of midnight. I was fortunate to discover this fragrance back in the 80's, an era that saw so many good fragrances come and go and some have sadly never returned. I wish this one would come back. The effervescence of golden champagne is at the start of the fragrance's performance top notes. Sweet Champagne, bubbly champagne, smelling of boozy peach, sparkling citrus, and vanilla. Yes it does come off as terribly old fashioned and like the ladies who reviewed this perfume like Lucia & Gigi reiterate, this fragrance is indeed unisex by today's standards. Maybe in the 80's it was a woman's market of perfume, but today a guy can smell very good wearing this with a tuxedo or a black formal suit or just a dressy shirt and slacks at a New Years Eve party. I would advise the guy or gal to apply lightly on pulse points. It does pack quite a punch because it has that smoky tobacco scent and a leathery musk, but it softens into sweetness of the more feminine touches of peach fruit, the minimal dose of florals like jasmine and lotus, and some woodsy notes. The whole thing is a spicy, sweet and festive fragrance. Despite it's age, it works very well in today's social culture of "where anything you like". It smells really good. It's elegant, polished, but playful, a mélange of fruit, champagne, musk and tobacco. I have never come across anything like it. It does get a lot of attention not only because it's rare but because it has a very unique and pleasant aroma. I wear this only with tuxedos. I'm wearing this tomorrow night at a New years Eve party as the countdown to midnight starts and we say goodbye to quite an impactful year 2016 and an uncertain future in 2017. Hold on to your loved ones, let go of prejudices, misconceptions, fears, and embrace progress and hope. The future can only be made not by irresponsible leaders but by responsible people who bond together and let nothing tear them apart. This fragrance conjures up images of an Old Hollywood old school New Years Eve gala. I see women and men dressed in black and white (i.e. like the Black and White Gala held by Truman Capote at the Plaza Hotel in the 60's. They are dancing under myriads of balloons and the air is resonant with live orchestra and Frank Sinatra is there singing New York New York. At the stroke of midnight the couples kiss and sing Auld Lang Syne. It's a blast where this perfume takes me. It always makes me feel bright and happy, optimistic. And that's what I need for tomorrow night. Happy New Year Fragranticans Soundtrack New York New York Frank Sinatra

This was the very first fragrance that I fell in love with at the tender age of 13. I recall that I first encountered this at the fragrance counter at the local (now since long defunct) Frederick & Nelson department store. I was with my Mom who was looking for a new fragrance and we happened to come across this beauty. She didn’t end up buying Champagne, but I left with a sample vial that I coveted. Being the age that I was, I had no idea what champagne smelled like, but if this is what it DID smell like, well damn. I can’t describe the notes that I loved so much in this juice (because I can’t go back in time 42 years, yeah I’m OLD 🤣), but I just know that I absolutely loved this stuff. And the memory of it stayed with me for years and it would pop up randomly in my mind because I never was able to have a bottle of it. A few years back, when I began seeking out (and hoarding) all of my fragrance loves of the past, this one was certainly on my list. Because it is now so rare to find, it took me awhile, but find it I did, in the form of a vintage mini. I wanted to see if it was still as good as my memory suggested. The verdict: yes, it’s still lovely, but I was not reunited with the love that I had for it in 1983. It is tamer than my smellmemory recalls. I’m not getting that champagne ZING. I was underwhelmed. I think that some of the top notes may be missing from my mini, or perhaps my tastes have just changed in the sea of perfumes I have since smelled in the passage of time. Now to me, Champagne smells like what a classy older gal would wear (certainly I fit into the “older” category, but I can’t really describe myself as “classy” 🤣 I live in tank tops and leggings). It has been a couple of years since I acquired my mini bottle, so I may just have to pull her out and give her another whirl again to see if there is a difference from my initial impression after being reunited with her.

The fragrance of my life. Nothing else has ever compared. When rumors started that Champagne was going to be discontinued, a sales lady steered me toward Maroc, by Ultima II. It had a quality that was somewhat satisfying. Unfortunately, Maroc was later discontinued. One day, I was leaving a meeting at work, and someone walked past with a scent that had me pushing through a crowd of co-workers to get to this woman to see what she was wearing. She told me Paloma Picasso. It too, had a quality that stirred memories of my beloved Champagne. These days, Paloma Picasso does not seem to evoke the same connection to my dear, long lost friend. Champagne was a scent that was memorable to me, but to others. Once,when I walked in a room, I heard someone from the next room say, "where is she?" The scent was me. Perhaps it was the combination of the ginger and the bergamot that made it pop. I have never considered Champagne a fruity scent, but it did have that "tickle your nose" quality that left a sparkling impression. It made me feel free to be myself, and proud to be me. I am getting ready to take the plunge and order from Scent Matchers. Hoping for the best.

Thank you Wuzzabee for your review. I did order the dupe a couple of years ago from your review and then I found a seller this month who had OG bottle with 50% left in it. Received it today and it’s a real treasure to behold. I can say the dupe is close but holding that art deco meets Star Wars bottle in my hand is such a treat. And the scent is so beautifully crafted. I’m a champagne girl at heart! 🍾 EDIT— It’s 2024 and I now I own 2 vintage spray bottles of this glorious elixir. The dupe doesn’t do it justice IMHO....

I loved this - I wish Monteil would bring it back! I can't give it a full review until I have it again...! I'm concerned that a "vintage" bottle will be spoiled. Any thoughts?

Does anyone know of a frangrance that reminds them of this? Loved it in the 80's, but I too am concerned about the aged bottles.