I chose this wine because with the unofficial start of summer Alsace is perfect. The white wines here are well known with the Rieslings and Gewurztraminers, and their sparkling wines prosper as well. Another key point is these wines are not expensive at all. Alsace is respected but it doesn’t have the same prestige as Champagne, Burgundy, or Bordeaux. This is great for you. In the US a typical bottle will be between $12 to $20.

This wine is from Rene Muré, a Cremant d’Alsace. On the nose is a wave of fresh pears and peaches. Keeping with the farm stand pattern it’s granny smith apples that take over the palate. This wine is a Brut, so it’s going to be dry, but with a slight sweetness upfront. Overall it is fresh and bright.

Now if anyone was wondering, yes, Cremant does taste delicious with Cassis Liqueur or perhaps orange juice. Did someone say Mimosa? I could swear I heard someone say it. Well either way, this is a fantastic way to liven up Sunday brunch and to Wine Your Diet. It’s light, refreshing, an excellent source of calcium, and one way to stay cool in the hot sun. There is one problem with Mimosas though; they go down way to fast. Pace yourself, there is something called too much calcium.

From Pars I say au revoir, but soon I will be greeting you from New York in hopes of bringing back pride to Long Island wines. For now go grab any bottle of sparkling wine, it doesn’t even have to be from France, pop it, enjoy it, and as always don’t forget to Wine Your Diet.

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I recently traveled to Reims, Champagne and to Dijon and Beaune in Burgundy. Reims and Epernay are the two big cities in Champagne that attract tourists. Reims was an enjoyable city to walk the streets with cafes lining pedestrian only walkways and a glass of Champagne in hand. The cellars were informative but you certainly don’t have to continue from one house to another, you will be receiving the same information at all. For most houses you need an appointment, which gave me the feeling of not being welcomed. Wine should not just be for a certain group of people that can fit the schedule. We were able though to get an appointment at Pommery and then we continued to Taittinger where there were no appointments necessary.The two tours if combined would have been spectacular, but where one lacked energy the other lacked information. After the tour you are given a glass of Champagne, well actually you paid for it with admission. Most houses are 10 euros, so put a few tours together in one day that will tell you the same information, then you have just wasted a lot of money. Instead I would recommend going to one house and then heading over to a café and popping a bottle and just enjoy your surroundings.

The next stop on the trip was Dijon in Burgundy…
Dijon was filled with friendly faces that knew each other and just enjoyed being. With their cobblestone streets and medieval appeal, it was refreshing to be here. In one restaurant they have a mock guillotine set up with different types of meats hanging from it. The server explained where we were, Place Emile Zola, was the location of guilloting, so they were incorporating history with the dining experience. The people were friendly, the atmosphere relaxing, and then history was alive.

One more place to go before heading back to Paris: Beaune. Beaune was a twenty-minute train ride south of Dijon. When we arrived we walked through the marketplace and picked up cheese and meats from sellers who would happily cut a sample for you before buying. Then of course, being in the land of mustard we had to include it in our picnic we were building. Once that was in order we had to make a decision, should we be tourists and stay in town and go to the houses and only sample the minimal and not really connect with the wine or do we rent bikes and head out into the vineyards and meet with the people who create them? Of course we rented the bikes. We went to Bourgogne Randonnées, right by the train station and the owners mapped out a route for us including vineyards to stop at.

We stopped at a few vineyards but one stood out strong, Château l’Ange Gardien (www.chateu-langegardien.com). We pulled up and it seemed like a scene in a movie. The husband and winemaker, Pierre was just pulling out to go to the fields and his wife Nicole was sitting at a picnic table enjoying her lunch with flowers and trees surrounding her. She immediately came over to us and brought us in to taste her wines. I can honestly say there was not one wine I didn’t enjoy. And then to finish it off she gave us a Kir Royal made with Cassis Liquor, that they also produced, as well as a fantastically refreshing bottle of Crémant.

I could have spent all day and all my money there but we had to move on to our next destination. When we go back into Beaune we dropped off the bikes and café hopped, having a different glass of wine at each. It was the perfect end to a perfect day. Beaune had the friendly appeal of Dijon, but there was something about being there that made you never want to leave. Actually, the woman from the bike shop was originally from Canada and came on vacation to Beaune. Then eighteen years later she never left.

While visiting Château l’Ange Gardien, I learned that there is a natural element in Pinot Noir that aids with digestion. I think the French are on to something here. Go grab a bottle of Burgundy and pair it with something delicious, but don’t forget to Wine Your Diet.

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For more reading see: Champagne – A New Year Tradition

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You have to check out these Champagne Onion recipes we found over at The Gilded Fork. I’m going to make them tomorrow, and have a good idea at the different flavors I can create by using different combinations of sparkling wine and onions. I figured we would make these 3

• “Sweet Vidalia Champagne Onions” – This recipe will make a great chip dip. We’ll cook the onions and some freshly minced garlic in Andre Blush Pink Champagne (a $4 bottle of delicious sparkling rose), and then add sour cream, chives, fresh ground pepper, and some sour cream and onion dip mix.
• “Purple Champagne Onions” – We’ll cook the onions with Hardys or Leasingham (both are a sweet sparkling Shiraz from Australia) or Leasingham then mix with cream cheese, and maybe a little roasted red pepper for spice. Put some sun-dried tomatoes and smoked salmon on a piece of toasted baguette along with a dollop of our extremely colorful sauce, maybe even garnish with a sprinkle of green onion.
• “Champagne Braised Cipollini Onions” – This recipe got me thinking about an entrée , like this beef tenderloin. We’ll cook the onions using Freixenet Spumante (a fruity, dry Cava from Spain) or Mionetto Prosecco Brut (a light Italian Prosecco), then slice them thinly and pour the reduced sauce over them. We’ll either cook a small tenderloin, or grill a filet, then thinly slice it; make sure you let it for 5-10 min. before slicing so it stays tender and moist. On each slice, place some onion sauce and horseradish cream (horseradish and sour cream). If I have a hard time finding Cipollini Onions, I’m sure the Vidalias would also work great.

Most people will go out this holiday season and buy bottles of Andre and Cook’s, both from California, which are a great and inexpensive way to bring in the New Year. The Cava, Prosecco, and Sparkling Shiraz mentioned in the recipes are also great imported wines for toasting a New Year, plus I don’t think any of them are over $20.

So go out during the Holidays and buy any bottle of Champagne or Sparkling White Wine, pop the cork if you feel the need because whatever you find enjoyable whether it be a loud or soft pop, is your preference. If hanging out with a cultured crowd the flamboyant procedure might not be advised. Sit back and let the bubbles tickle your throat and get jazzed about a healthy and prosperous New Year!

Quick Lesson: Champagne is a wine region in France located about 100 miles east of Paris. It is legally divided into 5 wine producing ‘districts’: the Aube, Côte des Blancs, Côte de Sézanne, Montagne de Reims, and Vallée de la Marne. Champagne/Sparkling Wine is generally marked as Extra Brut, Brut, Extra dry, Sec and Demi-sec, depending on how sweet they are. Extra bruit is extremely dry, while demi-sec is the sweetest.

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So many people I know want to drink sparkling wine more often. There’s something about that crisp smell of brioche, the tiny little bubbles which well up against the tongue and the refreshing and unmistakeably classy finish of a méthode champenoise wines that seem to elevate the mood and get one into a good mood. Red wine is simply not a cocktail beverage, and it can be a bit heavy going to have more than a glass in the absence of food. While white wine always suits me fine, many of my friends crave bubbles at a club. Everyone looks and feels good holding a champagne flute, as opposed to say, a beer bottle or a rum & coke in a highball glass.

It’s a pity that wine marketers have not picked up on this. While Coppola has attempted, by putting their method champenoise into a pink tin with a straw, this completely overlooks the huge potential male market who are even less likely to order a pink tin of sparkling wine than they are a bottle from Reims.

Greg and I visited J Winery in Russian River just last week, and were both well impressed by their champagne which boasts a zest and floral nose with a rounded peaches and cream entry finished with a ginger zing.

Some other recommend sparkling wines that wont make you broke:

Jacquart Mosaïque, Graham Beck Brut, Nicolas Feuillatte and Lanson Black Label Brut.

We can only hope that marketers will bring more of this stuff into a party setting and target it at the younger generation. Down with wine-coolers and long live sparkling wine!

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if you’re trying to get drunk and sleep with cocktail waitresses, then there really is no difference between the wines you choose. Wine’s alcohol volumes vary at a maximum of 3%, and if you’re out to get drunk you should just hit the cheap stuff. Don’t even worry about getting a bottle, some places do bag in the box without the box, and what it may lack in style, it sure makes up for in price.

However, cheap wine is not just for students and desperate men looking to gain some confidence to proposition the waitress, I would put forward that there’s a lot to be learned from the real el’cheapo stuff. In fact, in many ways one can learn more from cheap wines than from expensive stuff.

My wife and I like to go to wine bars and experience whatever flights they have, we then rank the wines in the order we like them, from best to least. I find it so difficult at times, because I generally like all wines equally, so long as they have an interesting flavour note, and then when one revisits the wine, it it often the case that it has completely changed since your first impression. For this reason, it is incredibly difficult and may take years of experience to be able to distinguish between single varietal wines from the same region at the same price point.

Do an experiment for yourself though, purchase an inexpensive bag in the box white blend; and then source a reasonably priced Chenin Blanc or Sauvignon Blanc. If you do a vertical tasting between the two, you’re likely to learn more about the more premium wine when you sample it next to the bag in the box. I’ve found that this is the best way to display to people that words like ‘complexity’ or ‘layers’ or ‘evolving bouquet’ are not just a bunch of elusive sommelier jargon. You will see that the more premium wine will begin to display different layers, and may completely evolve as it warms up by just a single degree in temperature. Bag in the box, however, is likely to be fairly one dimensional and keep the same characteristic throughout, and is likely to have some chemical added to it that would make it taste consistent from bag to bag, and from year to year. Consider that Yellowtail is able to make 1 million bottles of Cabernet taste almost exactly the same year in and year out, I should think this a little strange, having personally tasted individual barrel samples at more boutiquey wineries where the same Cab tasted different from vineyard block to vineyard block.

The greatest value of a ‘two-buck-chuck’ is it makes us appreciate just how much value we’re really gaining by just spending $10 more and that wine is one product you should never cut corners on.

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