"Would you like to start with Champagne?" the waiter asks as you and your Sweetie sit down to celebrate Valentines Day. As this is a day set apart for sparklers, your answer should be, "Of course."

Even people who prefer still wine drink sparklers on Valentines Day, quite possibly because the sparkle in the glass holds the promise of the night ahead. In the finest five-star restaurants around the world, champagne is often offered from a cart, with the sommelier explaining the various producers. On Valentine's Day, most waiters will also ask you if you'd like to start out with a glass.

Depending on your budget for the evening, you may want to look at the wine list first. Some top restaurants price their champagne at $25 a glass, sometimes more. Sure, it's top quality, but if price is an issue, you will be happy to learn you can find many impressive, delicious, affordable good quality sparkling wines on the list.

What is Champagne?

Americans commonly use the word champagne to refer to any sparking wine. Legally, only sparkling wine produced in the region of Champagne, France has the right to call their sparkling product Champagne. Even inside France, any wine that sparkles is called Cremant, not Champagne.

If you have had the good fortune to have tried genuine champagne and want to replicate that experience (but not the price), you will want to choose a sparkling wine made in what is called the "traditional method." For simplicity, this means the exact same wine making process is used as in the Champagne region, but the grapes are not specifically grown in the Champagne region. Nor are they necessarily the same three varietals of grapes used in the Champagne region: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meuniere.

At this point you may be thinking, hey, isn't Pinot Noir a black grape? Doesn't that make a red wine? Isn't that the grape that the film Sideways was all about? What does Pinot Noir have to do with top quality Champagne? Good questions.