My favorite adult beverage for about the last ten years has been sparkling wine and champagne. I have probably written over a dozen emails about my bubbles. Here are some more bubbly insights.
From Winespeed: Well isn’t this brilliant. Just when flutes increasingly find themselves the object of Champagne-lovers’ dismay (even disdain), it’s beer to the rescue. The German Beer company Beck’s has just released beer in a can shaped like a flute. It’s not that far-fetched really. Historically, many traditional beer glasses were shaped like Champagne flutes, and both beverages derive some of their pleasure from bubbles. Curiously, one of the reasons the flute is in disfavor for Champagne is that it isn’t ideal for appreciating the wine’s aroma. (Because you can’t easily swirl the wine in a flute, volatile aromatic compounds aren’t easily released and the wine is rendered less “smellable.”) Leading us to wonder: are beer lovers less aromatically inclined?
Some rules exist to determine how my favorite Limouxs are made: Viognier is a major grape of the Languedoc region, but cannot be used to make Limoux’s famous sparkling. By law, Blanquette de Limoux is made with at least 90% mauzac, with chenin blanc and chardonnay added if desired. It is made by the traditional (Champagne) method and aged sur lie for a minimum of nine months. Interestingly, blanquette is the Occitan word for the mauzac grape and also refers to the dusty, white, powdery appearance of the leaves on mauzac vines. (Occitan is the historic language of southern France).
Here is an interesting story about wine glasses from Winespeed: Limiting yourself to just one glass of wine isn’t always an easy task. And it turns out it may be even harder depending on the size of that glass. The Behavior and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge recently studied patrons at a local pub in hopes of finding out if changing the size of the wine glass has any effect on drinking behavior. (And no, we aren’t talking Betty White-sized glasses.) It turns out, decreasing the size of the glass has no noticeable effect, but increasing the glass size does. In the experiment, the same amount of wine was poured in varying glasses. Nonetheless, people felt there to be less wine in the larger glasses. That led them to drink faster and drink more–10% more. So it seems like the question isn’t: is the glass half full or half empty? But: how big is the glass?
Actually, I prefer a medium sized glass. I don’t want my champagne to get warm, but I don’t want to keep refilling my glass.
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