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PrintChampagne bubbles worth bursting
No holiday gathering is complete without champagne. Try these varieties and toast the season.
We are in the happy month — December. Holiday parties, year-end bonuses, gift giving and receiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s Eve.
This calls for lots and lots of bubbles. Dry bubbles, sweet bubbles, red bubbles — they are all refreshing and slip and slide down your throat at the merest beacon.
Madame Lilly Bollinger of the Bollinger Champagne house in Champagne, France, summed up champagne with this quote: “I only drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. When I have company over, I consider it obligatory, and I drink it when I’m alone. I trifle with it when I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it, unless …. I’m thirsty!”
Have you ever seen a cranky person with a glass of bubbly in hand? Certainly not. It is liquid pleasure and one you should have on hand for every holiday or celebratory happening in December (and beyond).
From driest to sweetest, here are the sweetness levels of champagne/sparkling wine: extra brut (driest), brut, extra dry, sec, demi-sec and doux (the sweetest).
Drink dry champagne with non-sweet foods and dishes; drink sweet champagne with desserts. Remember, you always want the wine to be sweeter than the dessert. That’s why dry champagne does not go with sweet wedding cake.
The main styles of champagne you should commit to immediate memory:
- Non-vintage (NV) — A blend of years with no year declaration.
- Vintage champagne — All grapes come from one year (called vintage); the year will be on the bottle.
- Blanc de Blancs — All Chardonnay grapes in this wine.
- Blanc de Noirs — All Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier (black grapes) in this wine.
- Rosé champagne — Made from blending a little still red wine into white champagne to add a pinkish color.
- Prestige Cuvee — The best of the best of one champagne house, such as Moet et Chandon’s Dom Perignon or Roederer’s Cristal.
- Single-vineyard champagne — All grapes come from a single vineyard such as Philipponnat’s Clos de Goisses in Champagne, France.
Well, I’m getting thirsty and have lots of celebrating to do this month. I’m in the mood for a chilled flute of Gosset’s NV Rose from Champagne. Je bois a votre santé!
Sips at home
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| Piper Heidsieck Brut NV Champagne, France — $38.99 This is one of the most affordable champagnes in our market and certainly one of the most delicious. Its high acid is refreshing and delivers flavors of Granny Smith apples, ripe pears, yeastiness and lemon. Remember, champagne is a wine, not a style of wine — meaning champagne only comes from Champagne, France; everything else is sparkling wine. | Domaine Ste Michelle Blanc de Noirs, Washington State — $12.49 For a domestic sparkling wine, this one beats all for the price. It is a rosé, so it has a beautiful pink color but is very dry. Many people think rosés are sweet, but these days, most are made in a dry style. Buy a case of any wine and get a 10 percent to 15 percent discount (varies by store). Lively flavors of strawberries, raspberries and cherries are awaiting you, so hurry! |
Sips around town
Michael Fusco’s Riverside Grill Kings Landing, 9912 Riverside Parkway, 394-CHEF
Byron Ramsey, longtime bartender for chef Michael Fusco, adores bubbles, so you can see that he and I get along famously. He sells the heck out of Schramsberg Mirabelle Brut Sparkling Wine from California at $6 a glass and $25 a bottle.
“It’s delicious and affordable — what could be better?” Ramsey says.
The Brasserie Restaurant and Bar 3509 S. Peoria Ave., 779-7070
Tim Baker, one of the head honchos at The Brasserie, can’t wait for the bubbles to go into a frenzy in December.
“We sell a lot of sparkling wine here in Tulsa,” he says. “Tulsans just love it.”
You can buy the Marquis de la Tour, a French sparkling wine (not champagne), for $5.50 a glass and $27 a bottle. Baker also offers Veuve Cliquot “Yellow Label” French champagne by the bottle for $105 and even the world-famous Dom Perignon for $275 a bottle. Guess where I’ll be every other day in December?
*Wine columnist Randa Warren is a Certified Master Sommelier; Certified Wine Educator; has earned a Diploma of Wine and Spirits, granted through the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in England; and is a Certified Specialist of Spirits.
