Four times a year, the cercle gathers in person.

A townhouse evening built around pinot noir in all its forms — young cuvées, late-disgorged millésimes, and a Coteaux Champenois poured blind — with Damien in the room to explain what the chalk did. Thirty seats, black tie optional and rarely resisted.

Four nights on the Montagne de Reims. Mornings in the chalk cellars learning riddling and dosage, afternoons in the pewter atelier where our labels are struck, evenings that end when the last magnum does. Members select the base wines for a cercle cuvée.

We fly in a French kitchen and hand them a room. One seating, one menu, every course poured with Champagne rather than finished with it, and no printed prices anywhere in sight.

Harvest weekend in the grand cru villages. Cut pinot noir in the morning if you like, taste vins clairs from tank in the afternoon, and eat what the family eats at the end of a picking day.