Buried Champagne at the Arboretum
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Charlie interrupts Josh's work to inquire about old vetting files for Vice President, shifting the conversation to a personal matter.
Charlie reveals a nostalgic note about a buried champagne bottle meant for Zoey's graduation, expressing reluctance to retrieve it due to her imminent departure with Jean-Paul.
Josh encourages Charlie to retrieve the champagne bottle as a friendly graduation gift, ensuring Zoey doesn't leave thinking he's angry.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Practically focused but personally solicitous—calm and directive outwardly while privately attentive to the human cost behind Charlie's confession.
Josh is methodically vetting a VP—crossing names from a Senate seating chart and pinning a newspaper photo—when Charlie interrupts. He listens, momentarily sets aside the political task, argues persuasively that Charlie retrieve the buried bottle, and physically hands Charlie a vetting folder before letting him leave.
- • Complete the immediate vetting task and maintain momentum on Hoynes replacement.
- • Convince Charlie to retrieve the champagne as a conciliatory gesture to prevent personal rancor with Zoey.
- • Preserve staff cohesion by handling the personal crisis efficiently and sensitively.
- • Small personal gestures can prevent bigger personal ruptures that bleed into professional life.
- • Political work must continue even while private problems demand attention.
- • Confrontation avoided by Charlie will worsen the situation; action (digging up the bottle) has remedial value.
Resentful and wounded—surface stubbornness masks longing and the ache of rejection; defensive pride keeps him from reaching for reconciliation easily.
Charlie interrupts Josh to ask about vetting files, then produces a wallet, reads a folded note revealing the secret burial, and refuses Josh's repeated urgings to retrieve the bottle, articulating pride and hurt while physically lingering in the bullpen and eventually taking the folder and leaving.
- • Avoid humiliating himself by retrieving the bottle after being rejected by Zoey.
- • Protect his dignity by refusing what he sees as a futile conciliatory gesture.
- • Confirm whether historical vetting files exist (initial practical question) and then exit the political conversation to manage his personal affairs.
- • A symbolic gesture won't change Zoey's decision; she already made her feelings clear.
- • Maintaining personal pride is preferable to brief emotional appeasement.
- • The buried bottle matters to him as ritual, but not enough to be the subject of public or embarrassing action.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The office TV is muted but broadcasts a report about Hoynes' farewell, supplying background political context and underscoring why Josh is vetting replacements—its presence heightens the contrast between public news cycles and private staff life.
The Senate seating chart sits on Josh's desk, a working tool he has been using to cross off names (McKenna is already eliminated). It contextualizes the urgency of Josh's work and visually contrasts institutional calculation with Charlie's personal confession.
Charlie's wallet is the tactile trigger for the scene: a note falls out, prompting his confession about the buried champagne. The wallet signifies private life intersecting with work and physically contains the memory that shifts the office tone from political to personal.
Josh retrieves a VP vetting folder from Donna's desk and ultimately hands it to Charlie, anchoring the political business that frames the personal interruption and reminding the audience of competing priorities in the West Wing.
The $14 bottle of champagne is the symbolic object around which the scene orbits: it embodies Charlie's ritualized hope, the class asymmetry of his gesture, and the potential for reconciliation. Though central to the conversation, it remains physically buried and unretrieved.
The small folded note ('5/7, 10 PM, Paeonia Japonica/Bamboo') is read aloud by Charlie, acting as the plot trigger that reveals the buried bottle's location and the ritual's date—turning private memory into actionable present and forcing Josh's intervention.
Josh rips a photograph from a newspaper—an immediate, decisive political gesture—and later sticks it on the vetting board. The clipping is the visual reminder of Bartlet's influence and the larger campaign-like decisions under discussion while the personal moment plays out.
The pinned picture of Bartlet and Leo functions as set dressing and narrative ballast—representing presidential preference and loyalty—contrasting the personal ruptures discussed in the room with the institutional alliances dominating Josh's work.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Donna's desk functions as the physical source of the vetting folder Josh retrieves, marking the practical mechanics of the vetting process and grounding the political business that frames Charlie's personal story.
Josh's bullpen area serves as the transitional space where Josh moves to get files from Donna's desk and where Charlie follows and delivers his confession. It is the public-working area that allows private disclosures to surface amid institutional bustle.
The Paeonia Japonica spot in the National Arboretum is the off-site sentimental location central to Charlie's story: the exact place where the champagne is buried, evoking memory, ritual, and the possibility of repair that Charlie resists.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Charlie's personal mission to retrieve the champagne bottle for Zoey is revisited when he and Josh go to the Arboretum at night."
"Charlie's personal mission to retrieve the champagne bottle for Zoey is revisited when he and Josh go to the Arboretum at night."
Key Dialogue
"CHARLIE: "I wrote this note three and a half years ago, right after Zoey started school. We buried, like, a $14 bottle of champagne, and decided we'd dig it up and drink it right after she graduated.""
"JOSH: "You got to get the bottle back.""
"CHARLIE: "No. I'm done. I gave it a shot. She said no. She said it clearly.""