Champagne is the only ground in the Day-Date range that is locked to a single metal and still gets the full run inside it. It exists on yellow gold and on nothing else, but within that metal it is offered plain and set, at 36mm and at 40mm, with no gap anywhere. The other single-metal grounds are all narrower than that. Chocolate and sundust belong to Everose and only at the larger size; brown ombre belongs to Everose and only at the smaller one. Champagne alone is confined to one case metal and unrestricted in every other respect, which is why it turns up on more yellow gold references than any other dial the model makes.
The ground is not really a color so much as a finish. Champagne is a warm metallic surface that returns light rather than absorbing it, sitting somewhere between gold and cream depending on what reaches it, and on a yellow gold case it behaves as an extension of the metal rather than as something placed inside it. The case is 36mm in yellow gold with the wide flat lugs and low band the model uses throughout, and the effect of the pairing is a watch that reads as one material from bezel to bracelet. Applied markers stand proud of the surface with polished faces, and on a ground this reflective they work harder than they would elsewhere, since both the markers and the dial are returning light and the separation between them comes from geometry rather than from contrast. The bezel is set with diamonds around its full circumference, which introduces the only cool element on the watch and provides the reference point the dial does not. The day aperture at twelve and the date window at three are framed in gold, and the President bracelet runs from the case in polished three-piece links with a concealed clasp. Champagne also sets the terms for how the rest of the watch has to be finished. A reflective dial sitting next to a polished case with no contrast between them would flatten into a single surface, so the markers carry the separation, and their faces are polished to a brightness the ground cannot reach.
The calendar makes a specific demand on a metallic ground that a flat one does not. Both the day and the date are printed on discs whose background has to match a dial surface that changes value continuously as the watch moves, and no printed disc can follow a metallic finish through its range. The frames therefore carry the whole burden of making two flat inserts sit convincingly inside a reflective field, which is why they are more prominent on champagne than they need to be on white. The day is written out in full at twelve rather than reduced to three letters, and the date sits at three under a lens set into the crystal. Both indications change instantaneously at midnight rather than turning gradually through the hour before. The movement carries roughly seventy hours off a full wind, enough that the watch is still running and still correct after a weekend in a drawer. Setting runs entirely through the crown, with no correctors cut into the case band, which is what allows the flank to stay smooth all the way into the bracelet. Eight grounds are built at this reference and champagne is one of only two the catalogue lists both plain and set, with green ombre taking the same pair of routes and white offered plain alone.
Yellow gold at 36mm is the most self-contained corner of the range. Ten grounds are offered on the case, and seven of them exist on yellow gold and nowhere else: champagne in both its forms, dark grey set, green ombre in both forms, bright green set and carnelian set. Only three of the ten travel to other metals, and those three are the colorless ones, white, mother-of-pearl set with diamonds and the fully paved dial. That makes the yellow gold roster almost a separate model, sharing a case and a movement with the platinum and Everose references while sharing very little of what sits on the dial. Three references carry that roster in full: 128238 with a fluted bezel, 128348RBR, and this one. The dials are identical across all three and the bezel is the only variable, though 128348RBR splits further on the bracelet. A buyer settles the ground first here, because the ground is the part that does not change. White is the useful counterexample on this case. It is offered here in both marker treatments, applied and Roman, which no other plain ground on the reference is, and it reaches all four metals and both case sizes, so it is the one dial a yellow gold buyer shares with everybody else in the range. Champagne is the opposite kind of dial, seen only by the people who chose this metal. Between them the two cover the two ways a Day-Date dial can be specified, the ground that belongs to the whole model and the ground that belongs to a single case, and the remaining eight sit somewhere between those poles with most of them closer to champagne.
Champagne with applied markers is the most traditional watch the reference makes, and it is chosen by people who want the Day-Date to look like the Day-Date rather than like a variation on it. Everything about the dial defers to the case. There is no contrast, no material effect, nothing asking to be examined, and the result is a warm monolithic watch interrupted only by the ring of stones around the bezel. That interruption is the whole tension in the piece, and it is a sharper one than it appears, since a set bezel over a champagne dial is a far less common sight than a set bezel over a colored or a stone one. For a collector who already owns a fluted champagne Day-Date, this is the same watch with the one element that was holding it back removed, and for anyone buying a first yellow gold example, it is the configuration that will still look correct in twenty years.
