a99kitten's Musings

Today, August 4 is said to be the day Dom Perignon invented champagne back in 1693. Now, I have no idea if this is true. Not sure anyone can confirm this as all parties involved are long gone and record-keeping was a bit spotty back then what with no iPhones, laptops or even a PC around ;-)

The funny thing is naturally occurring bubbles were seen as a problem at the time in wine-making so this was more of a problem than an invention but I’ll take it :) And from what I have read, what was invented back then as a sparkling wine/champagne bears no resemblance to what we love to toast with now.

The Dom :) Looks like its bubbling over to me :)

Now, if you know me, you know I call all bubbly ‘champagne’ (or just bubbly) because that whole “it can’t be called champagne if the grapes aren’t from that region” is phooey to me. But I’ve ranted about that before so won’t re-hash :) So if you are offended if I call a delicious Gloria Ferrar Carneros Cuvee or a Schramsberg Brut “champagne” – you should hang up right now because I simply don’t care if I offended your delicate sensibilities about that.

Champagne is a happy drink.  It can be served, and goes well, with any food – from fanciful 6 course dinners to pizza. A long-standing holiday tradition for me is when trimming my Christmas tree I order pizza and drink champagne. Love this! Another of my favorites treats is, when my husband is out of town and I don’t need to make dinner and feel like being bad, a glass of dry Brut with a McDonald’s cheeseburger and fries. The salty food and sweet but not really that sweet Brut mixture is fantastic!  I *highly* recommend you try it!

But whatever the truth is about the true origins of champagne, we do owe the Dom (not to be confused with the Don!) a big THANK YOU anyway! And I see this as a good enough reason to toast him this evening with a glass of bubbly  – although likely not opening one of my bottles of Dom to do it since I can’t drink the entire thing by myself and it is school night after all :)

If you love champagne like I do, I highly recommend reading “The Widow Clicquot”:

I really liked this book.  A good amount of reading on champagne making history in general plus about the Widow’s life. Fun read for sure. Starts off a bit slow so keep with it :)

And if you really want to try a “fancier” bottle of bubbly but find the prices out of reach, look around for a newly released vintage and just hold onto it for a few years.  They are still pricey but much less so and it’s a great way to enjoy a really nice bottle on a special occasion later. Champagne should be enjoyed within 10 or so years of its vintage year (on bottle.)    Although I had a bottle of Cristal that was given to me as a gift (2 bottles actually) about 13-15 years ago. I finally just opened 1 of them last year and it was GREAT! I need to enjoy the other one soon because if it were to go bad – I would definitely cry over the needless waste of a $400+ bottle of anything!!

And get yourself a champagne stopper so you don’t have to drink it all in 1 night (this is for the less expensive bottles – finish your good ones!) Or *horrors* waste it….this was the best buy ever! I love mine from Beverages & More.  I think it cost like $5.00 or something. I had one from Bed, Bath & Beyond – not as good.

Hope you enjoy some soon!

Today I went to the K&L Wine in Redwood City for their “Sparkling Wines From All Over The World” tasting.  5 of us from work met there.

The tasting was only $15 which I thought was pretty reasonable as there were 9 bubblys to taste.  I arrived on time and everyone else was late :) so I spent some time talking to one of the guys (Gary) who worked there (as a Champagne buyer – excellent job!) and he was telling me all about the Champagne region, smaller places to visit, restaurants, etc. I just finished reading “The Widow Cliquot” so am quite excited to visit the region (and of course I LOVE bubbly.) He was very friendly and informative and spent about 25 minutes chatting with me about champagne: the business of champagne, the region of Champagne and, of course, drinking champagne and what we’d be tasting today :)

More and more people started coming in the store so he had to move on and help others so I went into their tasting room to start my tasting as my friends STILL weren’t there!  The girl that was pouring was very friendly and informative.  She wasn’t a snotty wine snob in ANY way and she said she preferred bubbly too (like me!) As were the other 2 women who were there tasting. So I was in good company right away :)

We tried:

-Jean-Francois Merieau “Bulles” Touraine Sparkling (Loire Valley, FR) *good*
-Dibon Cava Brut NV (Spain) *very good*
-Bianchi Extra Brut NV (Argentina) *good*
-2005 Argyle Willamette Valley Brut (Oregon) *pretty good*
-Launois “Quartz” Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne (Champagne, FR) *meh*
-Cremant de Limoux Rosé Antech “Emotion” (Limoux, FR) *very good*
-Taltarni Brut Rosé “Tache” Sparkling Wine (Tasmania) *good*
-Ca Berti Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro “Robusco” (Italy) *meh*
-NV Majella Sparkling Shiraz (Australia) *ok*

I used very technical ratings in astericks next to each name :)  I found it funny that I liked the French Champagne the least. Kinda makes me laugh since they are so snotty about being the only ones able to call their sparkling wine “champagne”.  I’ve read the reasoning, blah, blah. I have tasted California Sparkling, Cava and Prosecco that are all very delicious. So they don’t need the the ‘champagne’ label. But if I call it champagne in casual conversation – I don’t want to be corrected by some dolt who thinks I don’t know it’s “only Champagne if it comes from the Champagne region.” (NO ONE at K&L did that!!!)

I bought a bottle of the Cremant de Limoux Rosé Antech “Emotion”. Was my favorite of the bunch. And reasonable! $14.99.  I also bought a tiny bottle of Soligo Prosecco Brut. I bought it for 2 reasons: 1) the bottle and label had a black & silver combo – very pretty!

Tiny Prosecco!

And 2) To add to the now growing collection of tiny bottles on my desk at work :)

Bubbly on desk :)

If you ever want a good, inexpensive and local bubbly (or wine) tasting, I suggest checking the schedule for K&L.  You can sign up for their email list and then you will see when they schedule them! They have 2 locations in the Bay Area (SF and Redwood City) and 1 in LA:

http://www.klwines.com/default.asp