Debate a Bubble - Champagne Detective

---

Champagne Detective Posted: 24 Nov 2010 07:33 AM PST There's nothing I like more than a challenge so I was delighted and intrigued when a friend in England asked me the other day if I could find out anything about a champagne called Chauvet Frères. My friend's friend had discovered, in the bottom of a wardrobe belonging to a relative who had recently died, an unopened half bottle of vintage champagne from 1926. The bottle had probably been in that wardrobe for years, possibly since way back in the 1920s or 1930s A wardrobe is not a good place for storing champagne and unlike the champagne that has been found in near perfect condition in shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean, I fear that this half bottle won't be worth drinking - the bottom of a wardrobe is neither as still, nor as dark and cool as the bottom of the sea - but it would still be great to discover more about it. The only clue is that the name on the label is  Chauvet Frères Reims Now there are at least 3 Champagnes by the name of Chauvet that are still around today: Marc Chauvet and Henri Chauvet in Rilly-La-Montagne and Auguste Chauvet in Tours-sur-Marne. I've spoken to them all hoping that one of them would be able to point me in the right direction. Perhaps one of them used to be called Chauvet Frères ( brothers) before some fascinating family feud? Alas No. None of them has any knowledge of Chauvet Frères, so it's back to square one. If anyone has any suggestions,please let me know. Meanwhile I'll carry on with my Sherlock Holmes act and see where it leads

You are subscribed to email updates from Debate a Bubble - Champagne News and Reviews To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Debate a Bubble - Top Tips For Your Perfect Champagne Party 3

---

Top Tips For Your Perfect Champagne Party 3 Posted: 18 Nov 2010 06:22 AM PST More about champagne glasses for ultimate style and elegance   Hold the glass by the stem   Only fill it 2/3 full (not to the brim)   Pour the champagne one glass at a time Holding the glass by the stem is so much more elegant than grabbing it by the bowl. Plus the warmth of your hand doesn't warm up the champagne, and you can see the lovely colour and the bubbles while it's in the glass. Never, ever fill your glasses to the brim. Why? Because that leaves no space for the aromas to develop in the glass, and you don't have any room to swirl the champagne around in your glass which will help those lovely aromas to reveal themselves.   Resist the temptation to pour a tray full of glasses before your guests arrive. If you do that not only will the champagne warm up after a few minutes, but worse, the fizz will soon die down. What a shame, when watching the bubbles as the champagne is poured is part of the magic of enjoying champagne. So take the time to fill the glasses individually for each of your guests, as they arrive. They'll appreciate it. When you're pouring is also the moment, to tell your guests what champagne you've chosen and why, giving you an "expert" status in their eyes – now that has a bit of style about it! If you want to find out more about how to throw stylish and elegant champagne parties, then check out "The Insider's Guide to Champagne"  an e-book that will reveal all the secrets of champagne.

Top Tips For Your Perfect Champagne Party 2 Posted: 19 Nov 2010 03:23 AM PST   What about the glasses? The glasses are important, and here's why: If there are too few bubbles in your bubbly, 9 times out of 10 it's the glasses, not the champagne, that are the problem.  Avoiding one big mistake can make sure you have loads of bubbles every time Saucers or flutes - it's up to you, but be aware of the difference it makes to the champagne   Let's face it flat champagne is not what you want at your stylish and elegant champagne party. Avoiding this disappointment is usually just a question of ensuring the glasses have been cleaned properly When I say "properly"  I mean that they've not  been washed  with  detergent, or worse, been washed in a dishwasher with RinseAid. You see, detergent and especially RinseAid leaves a film inside the glass making it almost impossible for the bubbles to "stick", to the inside surface of the glass. That means fewer bubbles and champagne that looks flat and definitely unappealing. This can be a particular problem if you've hired glasses from a caterer because most of them don't know about this and use RinseAid to make the glasses sparkle - great intention... bad result. Instead Wash your champagne glasses using just hot water – the hotter the better.  Then leave the glasses to dry If necessary polish them up with a clean cloth This way your champagne glasses will be in perfect condition and you'll avoid embarassment later when your guests start remarking that there are no bubbles. The type of glass you use is really up to you. The saucers (coupes) are fun and good if you want to mix your champagne into cocktails. One sugar cube with a couple of drops of Angostura Bitters and a good measure of brandy or cognac topped up with champagne is still a hard one to beat. But to get the most out of your champagne use tall, tulip-shaped flutes. This shape that gently curves inwards at the brim allows the complex aromas to concentrate. You'll really be able to notice the difference and, if you've selected a special champagne for your party, you certainly won't want to miss out on that experience. This was tip No.2 for the perfect champagne party. More tips coming soon

You are subscribed to email updates from Debate a Bubble - Champagne News and Reviews To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Debate a Bubble - Top Tips For Your Perfect Champagne Party 1

---

Top Tips For Your Perfect Champagne Party 1 Posted: 18 Nov 2010 12:47 PM PST Bubbly Tip No 1 – Putting on the Style  Big is Better and here's why  A regular bottle of champagne only gives you 6 or 7 glasses   Try magnums instead. They look great and add to the atmosphere Champagne tastes better from a magnum   Here's why...  One regular bottle of champagne won't be enough if you have more than 6 guests – just to top everyone's glass up you'll need at least two bottles – so go for magnums instead. A magnum will give you at least 12, sometimes 14 glasses, depending on the champagne glasses you're using. That means less time spent opening the bottles, and more time sampling the bubbly with your friends! Magnums look enticing and elegant as you pour them, what's more many people have never had champagne from a magnum so that adds to their enjoyment as well. They're not hard to handle either and you'll only need to chill them for about 20 minutes with half ice, half water, just like a normal bottle,  and then you're ready to go. Impress your friends with these bigger and better bottles Why 'better'? Let me explain... As a  magnum matures in the cellars in France you have twice as much bubbly as in a normal bottle, but only a little bit more air in the magnum, so the whole ageing process is slower than for a regular bottle. That means that the champagne spends longer in the producer's cellar and, as you'll know, ( if you've already got your copy of The Insider's Guide to Champagne) longer ageing produces flavours that are richer, rounder and more complex. Give magnums a try and I'm sure you'll notice the difference! Look out for more great tips soon about how you can get the maximum enjoyment out of your champagne this Christmas

Half Bottles Of Champagne Posted: 18 Nov 2010 11:51 PM PST Recently an American couple who were staying at our B & B in champagne shared with me a bottle of rather unusual champagne. It looked pretty ordinary at first sight as you can see from the picture but it turned out to be anything but ordinary - well worth a few lines in a blog post because there's always something new to learn about champagne Take a look and see what you think You can't make out much from this picture I admit. In fact it's a half bottle, not a full bottle and here's a close-up picture so you can get a better view   It's not the champagne maker that makes this bottle interesting: Bernardin in the village of Trépail - not a champagne that I had heard of even though Trépail is only about 5 kilometres from where I live  If you look carefully though, you can see that this is a vintage champagne from 2002 a rosé champagne a half bottle So why is this unusual? Well, the thing about half bottles is that they don't last as long as normal-sized bottles. In fact the smaller the bottles the shorter the time you should keep them and vice versa. Half bottles are definitely not meant for laying down. It's a great idea to have a few in stock but they're meant for opening whenever you fancy a glass or two of champagne, not to hang on to. It's odd then to find a vintage champagne in a half bottle, in fact I can't think I've ever come across a half bottle of vintage champagne before, much less a half bottle of vintage rosé. After all, vintage champagne is aged longer in the cellar and is supposed to have much longer ageing potential than non-vintage, so it just doesn't lend itself to half bottles. So I was curious to see what this champagne tasted like - it had been 7 years since it was first put into the bottle - and lo and behold it was certainly past its best. The colour was quite dark and the taste was sort of smokey with more than a touch of licquorice to it. Any fresh red fruit flavours that may have been there a few years ago had become very concentrated in a heavy and lifeless sort of a way. It wasn't exactly unpleasant but not a great bottle at all. The moral of the story is not to hold on to half bottles too long and if you're interested in storing champagne for a year or more, then the bigger the bottle the better.

You are subscribed to email updates from Debate a Bubble - Champagne News and Reviews To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Debate a Bubble - Supermarket Champagne - Does It Make You Feel Special?

---

Supermarket Champagne - Does It Make You Feel Special? Posted: 19 Oct 2010 07:24 AM PDT My last post was all about cheap champagne and in particular the amazing prices that the supermarkets in the U.K. and, to a lesser extent elsewhere, offer around Christmas time. Are these champagnes any good? Are they good value? Would you be better off buying two bottles of Cava instead of one bottle of cheap champagne? All good questions and like all matters of value and taste, the answer is subjective - there's no right or wrong reply. But that did get me wondering why we enjoy buying, or at least drinking, champagne. For me champagne has to make me feel as though I'm enjoying a special treat. If it doesn't do that then, whatever the price, I would definitely be asking myself 'Is this worth it'? In my view champagne has to offer me EITHER the history, tradition, glamour and style of the big houses - I'd be a hypocrite if I said I wasn't impressed by all that, OR the humanity and authenticity that some of the smaller growers offer and which the large houses find much harder to achieve.  So where do supermarket champagnes fit into that? For me they offer me neither of the things I look for and I can't see that they offer much except the price. I was driving near the Côte des Blancs this morning and  saw something that only served to reinforce this feeling .   I drove past Château Malakoff. No, not a palacial manor house, but a huge and very modern production facility where three brands are produced: Beaumet, Jeanmaire and Oudinet. No room for romance here. This is a factory and as if to prove it there's a tanker park by the side. Of course all big champagne houses transport juice by tanker, but do you, the consumer, need or want to see this? The quality of the champagne may be great. In fact Oudinet is sold by Marks & Spencer in the U.K. and they have a reputation for good wine and, to be fair, they don't sell Oudient at bargain basement prices- but if I'm looking for either of the two things that make me want to buy champagne, I'm not going to find them at Château Malakoff. So what about you? What makes you buy champagne? Why not share your views by leaving a post here? Looking forward to hearing from you

You are subscribed to email updates from Debate a Bubble - Champagne News and Reviews To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Debate a Bubble - What Price For Cheap Champagne?

---

What Price For Cheap Champagne? Posted: 18 Oct 2010 05:25 AM PDT I was in an Intermarché  supermarket here in Champagne the other day and decided to buy one of the cheap champagnes to see what it was like. I grabbed a bottle of Colin-Guillaume for 16€. It wasn't bad at all for the price. I wouldn't go out and buy cases of the stuff (in fact I wouldn't normally buy supermarket champagne at all) but it went down pretty well. This got me thinking about the price of champagne in general and in particular the deals that are sure to be around this Christmas, particularly in the U.K.  People are already suggesting that you'll be able to buy champagne at £10 a bottle in the U.K. and I wondered how this was possible. I started doing a little digging and came across a report in the local Champagne newspaper - L'Union-  on this very subject. The article was written this time last year but the figures are probably pretty close to the truth this year as well. L'Union had calculated the cost price of a bottle of champagne as being 8 euros. Add on say 25 -50 centimes for transport and you get a total price of, say, 8.50 euros a bottle. About £7.45 GBP at today's exchange rate. If you live outside the U.K. please do the sums using your own currency's exchange rate. In the U.K. you have to pay £2.16 duty on a bottle of champagne ( so that makes a total of £9.61 so far) and then you have to add Value Added Tax at 17.5% on top of that. So we're now up to a retail price of £11.29 if the retailer makes no profit at all. So if a bottle sells for less than this it suggests that either the producer in Champagne is selling at a loss, just to get some cash in, or the supermarket is selling at a loss, probably to attract customers and sell them other goods at a normal profit margin. Certainly this sort of thing happens a lot and if you're looking for a cheap champagne for a party or large function when no one is really going to be bothered too much what they are drinking, then cheap champagnes can be fine. Don't forget mind though that these are one-off deals. Usually a given number of bottles only are sold at this sort of price, so if you want to buy more a few weeks later, you probably won't find the same price and possibly not even the same champagne. A more weighty question though is what do you think of champagne at this sort of price? Do you think that prices as low as this ruin the image of champagne and perhaps ruin the very reason you want to buy it in the first place? Or are you happy to buy champagne as cheaply as possible?  Perhaps yet again you'd pay a bit more for a champagne for a more special occasion? I'd love to hear what you think so do post a reply on this blog or send me an e-mail to jiles@madaboutbubbly.com

You are subscribed to email updates from Debate a Bubble - Champagne News and Reviews To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610