Lobster Rolls & Champagne

This is how it's done!

For Matt's 33rd birthday he requested I make lobster rolls from Thomas Keller's (of Bouchon & French Laundry fame) lobster rolls from the Ad Hoc cookbook. I was a little leery at first because while I admire Keller's precision and formidable skills his recipes seem a bit unnecessarily complicated. Turns out it was no big deal. The work is all in the prep (hello picking 5 lobsters) and then assembly. Plus you end up with tons of shells to make stock for a winter fish stew.

Matt brought a gorgeous Champagne that has a great balance between dry and citrusy and bready, toasty notes. Larmandier-Bernier 'Terre de Vertus' NV is a naturally made, grower Champagne that retails for $78.99. It is a Brut Nature Blanc de Blanc which means no sugar was added during fermentation (also called dosage this is a common practice for many Champagnes, some more than others) and it was made from all Chardonnay grapes. The result is a superb wine that reminded me why Champagne is so special.

Quite simply, it all rocked.

Fried Chicken and Sparkling Wine - A Beautiful Thing

Most people use sparkling wine for celebratory occasions such as New Years. That's great, but as a wine to pair with food I think good sparkling wine is under-rated. In particular, sparkling wine is fantastic with fried foods. This is because the palate-cleansing properties of these wines are great for greasy foods which tend to stick. The other day I made fried chicken and paired it with the fantastic Thibaut-Jannison sparkling wine from Virginia. This wine is made by a bonafide Champagne producer who makes this wine in Virginia as a side project. It's the best sparkling wine made in Virginia I've ever tasted, and better than the vast majority even from California. A little more fruit-forward and less yeasty then genuine Champagne, it was a great pairing with the chicken. I know this picture makes you want to try it. And so you can! This wine is availble at both stores. If you want to get really fancy and use real Champagne (ie sparkling wine from Champagne) then do so by all means.

If you want tips on the chicken, just ask me.

A Champagne Primer for New Year's

You may have noticed that our posts have been infrequent this month. Sorry! The busy holiday season is getting to us. In the New Year we'll increase the frequency of the posts. Now onto my point.

It's the time of year to drink bubbly wine again. If you're looking for a Champagne to toast the new year, you could do what many other Americans do and buy a big name brand, like Moet or Dom Perignon (also made by Moet). But if you want more bang for your buck, the rule with Champagne is the more obscure the better. Here's why.

Champagne houses like Moet & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot are huge operations that churn out millions of bottles. To get their worldwide distribution they deal with brokers, who deal with importers, who deal with distributors, who may deal with yet more distributors, who finally deal with the retailer, who sells it to you. That means the wine has passed through several hands each marking up the price as they go. Plus, how good can a Champagne be when produced in this huge quantity? The best deals with Champagne are from what is known as Grower's Champagne. These are small Champagne houses that tend the vineyards and make the wine (big Champagne houses buy their grapes from elsewhere). Because the production is smaller they can pay more attention to each bottle and make some really interesting sparkling wine, which is really the style that made Champagne what it is. Plus, these wineries usually deal directly with the importer who usually distributes it as well, so instead of several parties each marking up the price on the wine as it goes, Grower Champagne goes from the winery to the importer to the retailer, ie us. Therefore you get more for what you pay.

It's for this reason that we specialize in Grower Champagne. We could probably sell more by carrying the big brands, but quality is more important. Our favorites are Veuve Fourny, who make several different kinds that we carry, Benoit Lahaye (a Grand Cru Champagne), and Roland Champion, who makes a 2000 vintage Grand Cru (the highest classification) Champagne for $70. A Grand Cru Vintage Champagne for $70. Forget about spending $130 + on Dom Perignon when you can get world class Champagne for practically half the price.

Making More Bubbly

Just recently the French decided to increase the size of the Champagne region (Matt has posted about this before), and the NY Times written a great piece about it complete with interactive maps and more.

Mr. Petit and the roughly 200 inhabitants of Magneux are part of an eager group of outsiders pressing to join the elite growers of the $7 billion Champagne industry.

A nearly eight-decade-old rule that delineates the official Champagne zone is about to be changed to include new territory, potentially allowing farmers like Mr. Petit to sell grapes for Champagne with the French seal of approval, the “Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée,” or A.O.C.

What I love about this news is that it takes struggling farmers and makes them almost wealthy overnight. It's the sort of rags to riches story you almost never see in France, mostly because everything is so regulated and things don't change very often. As the article explains it won't mean a decrease in Champagne prices, especially in the US. Turns out China's new middle and upper middle class is gobbling up Champagne and probably Bordeaux too.
Click here for the article.

We've Got Our Hands on Something Very Rare....

A dessert wine from Champagne! By Champagne I'm referring to the region in France famous for its sparkling wines, not any sparkling wine, as the term is often incorrectly used. As it turns out Champagne doesn't just produce sparklers, they make a very interesting aperitif/dessert wine called Ratafia de Champagne. To make it, the winemakers make a sort of brandy from champagne grapes (mainly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir). They then blend it with unfermented chardonnay and pinot noir juice and then age it in oak casks for two years. The result is a semi-sweet, almost sherry-like wine. It comes with a champagne cork, but isn't carbonated at all.

The wine itself is not necessarily rare - many champagne producers make one. What is rare is seeing any in the United States. To find this you usually have to travel to Champagne or perhaps a boutique wine shop in Paris. If your father is a wine lover this would make a great gift - he's probably never had one before. I wish I had a picture to show you, but if you want to see it come into either kybecca store and ask to see the Fourny Ratafia de Champagne (or if you can't remember that, just ask to see the Champagne dessert wine).

Good News for Champagne Lovers

Via Vinography I learned that France is going to expand the Champagne AOC (appellation) so that new villages and wineries can now put Champagne on their labels. This move is to satisfy growing worldwide demand for Champagne, mostly coming from the newly rich in Russia and China.

This is good because it means we will be introduced to new wines that probably never got exported because Champagne wasn't on the label and will hopefully help keep Champagne prices in check now that more wineries are competing.

For those who need some background, only wineries within the Champagne region of France are allowed to put Champagne on their label, even though similar wines are produced elsewhere. Of course, Champagne gained a reputation over the years for producing the best sparkling wine, which is why being able to label your wine Champagne is so coveted.

As a side note, sparkling wine should only be called Champagne if it is from Champagne. This may seem trivial, but imagine for a moment that Virginia produced the best red wine in the world. Wouldn't it make you angry if winemakers in France were putting 'Virginia' on their labels to help sell the wine? I cringe on the inside when I see mediocre sparkling wine from California at the grocery store labeled Champagne.

I'm In Love

Really, truly, deeply.
The subject of my new-found affection is the Veuve Fourny Cuvee "R" Extra Brut. I hardly know what to say about this Champagne. Every once in awhile a wine really has an effect on me. I taste a lot of wine, and most of it is at least good, a few are great, and one or two a year really make me feel transported. Veuve Fourny is one of my favorite producers, and when Emmanuel cam last year and did a tasting for us it they instantly became the most popular sparkling wines in the store. A little bit of googling on the Cuvee "R' yielded the information below:

"The Cuvée R Extra Brut is named for the Fournys’ father Roger, who preferred to use a little pinot in his blends—it’s a blend of 90 percent chardonnay and 10 percent pinot noir, as his wines often were. Fermented and aged entirely in barrique, it’s always a blend of two vintages, and spends four years in the cellars before release. The backbone of the Cuvée R is the fruit from old vines in a lieu-dit called Les Barillées, on the heart of the mid-slope of Vertus, which gives dense, sleekly powerful chardonnay." Peter Liem, Wine & Spirits

This is a powerful yet delicate sparkling wine with flavors of orange peel, crisp lemon, slight yeasty notes, hints of wildflowers, and so much more. Drinking it makes me feel like I am back in France. This is what they mean by luxury in a bottle. I am turning 37 on Monday and this is what I will use to celebrate. By the way this and quite a few other V Fourny Champagnes are on the wine list at Citronelle in DC.