Home » Posts tagged 'Champagne'
Posts Tagged ‘Champagne’
What is Moscato? Sweet wine for sugar daddies if rapper Drake is to be believed. In Do It Now he raps: "Lobster and shrimp and a glass of moscato, for the girl who's a student and her friend whose a model." Hey! Serving alcohol to minors is illegal people even if it's a relatively low-alcohol wine (i.e. 5% vs. a typical 12% alcohol by volume wine).
What is Moscato? Cont'd
Tagsasti spumante wine, calories in wine, Champagne, Champagne bubbles, dessert wine, italian sparkling wine, low-alcohol wine, moscato cocktails, moscato d'asti, moscato wine, Piedmont, sweet wine, wine sales
Posted in Sparkling Wine, Wine Price and Sales, Wine Trends
A new word for the New Year, just don't call it cheap Champagne. But, whether you know what Prosecco is or not, chances are very good you'll have some New Year's Eve.
Prosecco is generally a dry Italian sparkling wine made from the grape variety Glera which is grown in the Veneto region of Italy. Up until the 1960s, Prosecco sparkling wine was basically rather sweet and barely distinguishable from the Asti Spumante wine produced in Piedmont. Since then, production techniques have improved, leading to the higher quality dry wines produced today.
Prosecco and Italian Sparkling Wine Cont'd
Tagsasti spumante wine, Champagne, cheap champagne, France, french champagne, italian sparkling wine, Italian wine, Italy, mionetto, Prosecco, prosecco frizzante, Rich Prosecco, sparkling wine, veneto region
Posted in Sparkling Wine, Wine Trends
On top of the immensity of the Olympic Winter Games, it appears the Canadians are planning an after party of equally biblical proportions. Thanks to Andre Saint-Jacques, owner of the Bearfoot Bistro and its extravagant underground
wine cellar of more than 20,000 bottles (a perennial winner of the Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence), the Champagne will flow freely for gold medal winners. And to make things even more thrilling, the Champagne bottles will be ceremoniously decapitated by Saint-Jacques himself - the Guinness World Record holder for most Champagne bottles sabred in a single minute (21).
Opening a Champagne bottle with a sword or saber by hitting the lip of the bottle (its weak point) with the blade, thereby severing the collar from the neck is called "Sabrage" and dates back to the Napoleonic Era. Napoleon was quite the lover of Champagne and is credited with saying, "Champagne! In victory one deserves it; in defeat one needs it." Saint-Jacques, also an effusive lover of the bubbly is Canada's No. 1 importer of Moet & Chandon.
Winter Games 2010, Sabrage and Salmanazars Continued
TagsAndre Saint-Jacques, Bearfoot Bistro, biblical kings, biblical proportions, Canada, Champagne, champagne bottle, champagne bottles, gold medal winners, gold medalists, guinness world record, guinness world record holder, jeroboam, jeroboams, large-format wine bottles, magnums, Moet and Chandon, Moët et Chandon, Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte, olympic games, olympic medalists, olympic winter games, sabrage, salmanazar, Whistler B.C., Wine Cellar, wine spectator, Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence, winter games 2010
Posted in Champagne, Moet and Chandon, Wine Cellar
Bordeaux wine lovers may credit the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris and Emperor Napoleon III's "Official Classification" with putting Bordeaux wine on the map. But, it turns out that his grandmother the Empress Josephine, first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte may have ignited French passion for the wine.
Prior to Josephine raising the status of Bordeaux to an elixer fit for nobility, it was seen as an inferior product suitable only for the English who had been stubborn lovers of claret, or red Bordeaux wine, for four centuries. At the time of the French Revolution, Burgundy and Champagne reigned supreme, in fact, not a single bottle of Bordeaux is known to have been kept in the
wine cellars of King Louis XVI.
Empress Josephine's Wine Cellar Continued
TagsBordeaux, Bordeaux Wine, Burgundy, Cape Town, celebrated hostess, Champagne, Château Laville Haut-Brion, Chateaux de Malmaison, Cyprus, Emperor Napoleon III, Empress Josephine, exposition universelle de paris, France, French Revolution, french wine, Germany, great drinker, Greece, Hungary, Italy, king louis xvi, Margaux, Martinique, medoc wine, Napoleon Bonaparte, Paris, Portugal, premiers cru, red bordeaux wine, saint helena, social historians, South Africa, south african wines, South Atlantic island, Spain, sweet wines, Wine Cellar, wine cellars, wine lovers
Posted in Bordeaux Wine, Champagne, Wine Cellar
At least since the Middle Ages. Due to warmer temperatures, a few British wineries have revived a red winemaking tradition which died around 600 years ago. Wine critcs' opinions about the wine have been mixed, but some seem convinced that the finest red wines may in the future come from north of the English channel if this warming trend continues.
With soils similar to Champagne and an edgier climate, England is already producing world-class sparkling wines like Nyetimber (which recently won the International Wine & Spirit Competition Denbies Trophy for the Best Worldwide Sparkling Wine for the 3rd time), Ridgeview and Camel Valley. But, red wine is a different story.
English Winemaking Continued
TagsCamel Valley, Champagne, english vineyards, english wine, english winemakers, IWSC, Nyetimber, Oenoview system, red wine, Ridgeview, satellite imagery
Posted in Sparkling Wine
1. The longest recorded Champagne cork flight was 177 feet and 9 inches, 4 feet from level ground at Woodbury Vineyards in New York state, on June 5, 1988.
2. Marilyn Monroe was said to have once taken a bath in 350 bottles of Champagne. Vintage not confirmed.
3. The largest cork tree in the world is known as The Whistler Tree. This tree is located in the Alentejo region of Portugal and averages more than 1 ton of raw cork per harvest, which is enough to cork 100,000 bottles of wine. Or one really big keg of beer.
4. Demi Moore tried to seduce Michael Douglas in the 1994 movie Disclosure with a bottle of the limited edition Pahlmeyer 1991 Chardonnay (Napa Valley, California). She seduced Ashton Kutcher in real life with a case of Red Bull.
5. A jar of red wine was found in Tutankhamen's tomb, inscribed with the winemaker name, Khaa, and the vintage, "Year 5." Those who tasted it remarked that it was "kinda funky."
TagsAshton Kutcher, Champagne, chardonnay wine, Demi Moore, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Douglas, Tutankhamen, wine facts
Posted in Champagne
Is the
wine cellar passe? Some French wine buffs believe there's a better place for storing wine, at the bottom of the sea (OMG!). A couple years ago, French winemakers began submerging hundreds of bottles of wine at a depth of 30ft in Saint-Malo Bay off the coast of Normandy. After being "massaged by the sea" for a year, it is said that "underwater whites" have more obvious wood aromas, and "submerged reds" evolve more slowly than cellared wine. Recently, Champagne house, Louis Roederer, sent divers to place several dozen bottles of its
Brut Premier at a depth of 50ft in Saint-Malo bay (hidden of course). In a year's time experts will assess if they have matured with a different or better taste than in the traditional cellars of the Champagne region. The sea may be the ideal wine cellar (i.e. constant temperatures, high humidity, no UV light), but it seems more like bored winemakers playing "Pirates of the Caribbean".
Click here for more information on
wine bottle storage.
TagsChampagne, Louis Roederer, Pirates of the Caribbean, Saint-Malo Bay, Wine Cellar, wine storage
Posted in Champagne, Wine Cellar
Bollinger is a major Champagne house in France. They produce several labels of Champagne under the Bollinger name, including the vintage Vieille Vignes Francaises, Grand Annee and R.D. as well as the
non-vintage Special Cuvee. Ever a favorite of the British, Bollinger became the official supplier to the British court in 1884, receiving a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria. It's even the choice of James Bond (i.e. Bollinger Grand Annee Champagne 1988, in "Golden Eye"). Well, it’s not often that a major Champagne house releases a new champagne but Bollinger has done just that with the release in London of Bollinger Rose. The creation of this non-vintage rose has been long in the making and a dream of the House for almost a decade. This Special Cuvee is 60% Pinot Noir, 25% Chardonnay, 15% Pinot Meunier, and will be widely available May 1st.
TagsBollinger Rose, Champagne, non-vintage special cuvee, Rose Champagne
Posted in Champagne
There was a time when excess Champagne was dumped into French rivers. As a matter of fact, wine-growers from Bordeaux and Burgundy used to say that the reason Champagne had bubbles was because the wine was no good. This may have been true at one time, but today, Champagne sales are experiencing significant growth. Recent figures show that worldwide sales hit a record high in 2007 with 338.7 million bottles sold, up 5.3 percent. Demand is outstripping supply to the point that 40 new towns will be added to Champagne's AOC (Appellation d'Origine Controlee) in an effort to keep up with the world's thirst for the legendary tipple. Sales of Bordeaux on the other hand are hampered by overproduction, overpricing and what's anticipated to be a disappointing 2007 vintage.
Tags2007 vintage, Bordeaux Wine, Champagne, Champagne AOC, Champagne Appellation, wine price, wine sales
Posted in Bordeaux Wine, Champagne, Wine Price and Sales
OK, let's turn Don Ho off (great New Years Eve party tune by the way). Tiny bubbles may make Don happy, but they make oenophiles pretty giddy too. An old adage about Champagne is, the smaller the bubbles, the finer the wine. The tiniest bubbles are the result of long aging, as well as the temperature of the aging cellar. The cooler the wine, the smaller the bubbles. Generally, really tiny bubbles are found in Champagnes known as prestige cuvees. A prestige cuvee is a wine manufacturer's best wine, and it is always given a special name.
Dom Perignon, for example, is the prestige cuvee of Moet and Chandon.
Click here for
further discussion of wine temperature.
TagsChampagne, Champagne bubbles, Dom Perignon, Moet and Chandon, prestige cuvee, sparkling wine, wine temperature
Posted in Champagne, Moet and Chandon
