The Wine Cellar Blog» France

Mom Will Feel Like a Princess with Kate Middleton’s Sauvignon Blanc

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 06:03:12 +0000

Mom may be a commoner, but she can at least drink like a princess for Mother's Day without it costing Dad and family a king's ransom. The night before her wedding to Prince William, Kate Middleton (now the Duchess of Cambridge) dined with close friends and family at the Goring Hotel in London’s Belgravia district. According to US Weekly, she chose the rather unpretentious Casa Lapostolle Sauvignon Blanc 2009 (costs about $50) to pair with her salmon blini starter, and entrée of steak Chateaubriand. This Chilean wine and the Lapostolle brand is 100% owned by the Marnier-Lapostolle family. The name Marnier may be familiar to lovers of liqueurs because the Marnier-Lapostolle family are also owners of the world-renowned orange liqueur Grand Marnier. While they are best known for this, the family has also been involved in winemaking for generations. Originally winegrowers in the Loire Valley, France, the Marnier-Lapostolle family continue this vintner tradition by creating world-class wines using French expertise and the superb terroir of Chile. This Mother's Day show Mom she is a "Princess of Personality" and the "Queen of your Heart" with a bottle of Casa Lapostolle Sauvignon Blanc and a salmon dinner, followed perhaps by a dessert of Crêpe Suzette (made with Grand Marnier) which was originally made (as one of the stories goes) for the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII of England.

This is a post from: The Wine Cellar Blog

What’s a Prosecco? Italian Sparkling Wine vs. French Champagne

admin — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 18:21:25 +0000

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 was introduced to the U.S. market in 2000 by Mionetto (still the largest importer of Prosecco) and has experienced double-digit percentage increases in global sales since 1998 (according to a 2008 New York Times article). However, unlike Champagne, its main commercial competitor, Prosecco is produced using the Charmat method, in which the secondary fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks (instead of the bottle), making the wine less expensive to produce. Also, unlike Champagne, Prosecco should not be aged, it should be drunk as young as possible and preferably before it is two years old. Prosecco is mainly produced as a sparkling wine in either the fully sparkling (spumante) or lightly sparkling (frizzante) varieties. Prosecco spumante, which has undergone a full secondary fermentation, is the more expensive variant. Cheap Prosecco frizzante is also sold in cans (see article on Paris Hilton's endorsement of Rich Prosecco in a can).

2010 was a good year for Italian sparkling wine, it will be long-remembered by Italian winemakers as the year it finally surpassed the production of French Champagne. This year's production of "bollicine" ("Bubbles", as sparkling wine is referred to in Italian) primarily Asti Spumante and Prosecco, will hit a stunning 380 million bottles, overtaking France's much more expensive (and much more valuable) Champagne by 10 million bottles, according to forecasts by Italy's wine expert association Assoenologi. Rivalry between the world's two top producers of bubbly has always been great, with France flaunting its brand supremacy and perceived superiority over Italy. But since on average sparkling wine costs much less than Champagne, the price factor has given Italian sparkling wine a distinct advantage in this economic climate. Exports of Spumante and Prosecco rose 17% within the first 9 months of 2010, as reported by the Italian farmer association Coldiretti. In Russia imports soared a hefty 166%. Following the trend, Vinitaly, a festival that promotes Italian wine globally will put "bollicine" in the spotlight in 2011. In addition to Prosecco, another important Italian sparkling wine region is Franciacorta. Franciacorta´s bubblies are considered to be the creme de la creme of sparkling wines in Italy, and it uses the "Champagne Method" of fermentation.

This is a post from: The Wine Cellar Blog

Empress Josephine’s Wine Cellar

admin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:01:29 +0000

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. When Marie-Josephe-Rose de Tascher de La Pagerie (aka Empress Josephine) died in 1814, she left a heap of unpaid bills and a golden legacy to social historians. Marie-Josephe-Rose, was among other things, a great connoisseur and collector of clothes, and an innovative gardener and botanist. The written inventory of her final possessions at her chateau west of Paris has inspired studies and exhibitions on subjects as varied as the fashion trends and gardening styles of the early 19th century. Josephine was also a celebrated hostess and, although not a great drinker, a great collector of wine. The official inventory of her possessions at her death includes more than 13,000 bottles of wine from all over the world, from Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal as well as South Africa and Hungary. The empress also kept hundreds of bottles of rum from her native Martinique, which she used in rum punches and served at dinner parties in gilded bowls. Josephine's chambermaid described her as a "very sober woman." She was partial to very sweet wines including champagne, but drank it all with moderation – like Napoleon. The Emperor Napoleon's favorites were Burgundy and Champagne, but he also grew fond of South African wines during his time in exile on Saint Helena, the South Atlantic island where he died in 1821 at age 52 – not far from Cape Town. Study of Josephine's 1814 "wine list" reveals something that may seem unsurprising but was, at the time, extraordinary. Almost half of her bottles and barrels came from vineyards around Bordeaux, little known chateaux that later would become some of the greatest names in wine: Latour, Lafite, Margaux and Haut-Brion. Was the Empress Josephine the cause of the great switch in French wine tastes which allowed the vineyards of Bordeaux, and especially the great chateaux of the Medoc, to emerge by the mid-19th century as the most prized wines in France and the world? This is one of the subjects explored in an entertaining exhibition, La Cave de Josephine (Josephine's Cellar), which has started at the Chateaux de Malmaison, where Josephine lived for the last 15 years of her life, and died in June 1814, aged 50. The exhibition, which will move to Germany and Italy next year, also examines other changes in the art de vivre of the French nobility which followed the fall of the monarchy. Before the Revolution, an aristocratic French dinner-party was a kind of immense, stand-up buffet in which all dishes were served at once. Wine glasses were kept on trays by servants and topped up as required. After the revolution, France gradually adopted the "Russian" style, now universal, of serving different, sit-down courses one after another. Wine glasses began, to be placed permanently on the table. These changes were driven partly by the post-Revolutionary lack of legions of low-paid servants. France had also finally cracked the "industrial secret" of how to make crystal wine glasses, something previously known only to the British.

This is a post from: The Wine Cellar Blog