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Savoring a rustic lunch of tuna salad, veal stew, and red wine, Benoit Gouez, chief vintner at Champagne house Moet & Chandon, took a long view of the financial crisis rocking the global economy.

"We are more than two centuries old and crisis and wars and problems, we have known them all in the past, and we are still here," he said as pickers harvested the latest crop of Champagne grapes outside.

Moet & Chandon survived even tougher times during the French Revolution, when the aristocracy stopped buying Champagne, and the house learned to turn adversity into success by discovering how to prosper through exports.