Niebaum-Coppola Sofia Blanc de Blancs 2002

As intimate and sensual as a drink can possibly be, this sparkling wine offers the alcoholic equivalent of taking home a bookish 15-year-old virgin, peeling off her pressed schoolgirl uniform, and deflowering her with a combination of forthright hunger and deep sensitivity. You thought you were just out to score, hanging around at the mall, but you find yourself falling in love. Sofia is the Lolita of sparkling wines.

It comes wrapped preciously in pink cellophane, with an elegant label on the bottle providing worshipful poesy for Francis Ford Coppola's beautiful daughter, who is as intriguingly indirect and hard-to-peg as the wine itself. Deliciously dry, fabulously fruity, substantial, and yet a bit over your head, Sofia is like drinking a fluteful of Lost in Translation, and offers the same pleasantly melancholic buzz.

It may be that my taste in champagne has acquired the same perspective as my taste in CDs, wherein the packaging and presentation has as much, if not more, to do with my satisfaction as the actual contents. But Sofia is as much a delight to drink as to purchase and/or to just look at. If it's a $5 wine in a $20 package, so be it; it's my new favorite. Now if only I could find the champagne equivalent of Lindsay Lohan.

Review by La Fée