La Veuve Charmante

There’s something endearing about this, in an Eleanor Lavish[1] kind of way: The homepage for Veuve Clicquot champagne is in French. It presents the viewer with a dropdown menu to enter your country and birthdate, to screen out under-legal-drinking-age kids. Once I picked “USA” it translated the page into English; I just think it’s funny that you have to speak enough French and/or be online-savvy enough to know to fill out the dropdown to get your own language.

Sadly, the endearingness wears off almost immediately: A pretentious Flash site that took forever to load, even over a T1. (I guess people think champagne sites should be pretentious. I was looking for something that reflected the champagne we drank yesterday, which tasted of flowers and joy.)

[1] “It’s very naughty of me, but I would like to set an examination paper at Dover, and turn back every tourist who couldn’t pass it.”