This month's Wine Blogging Wednesday is being hosted by Sam of Becks and Posh, a San Francisco area food blog that I plan to spend a lot of time reading in the next couple of weeks before we leave for our USA roadtrip. Sam chose Champagne as the theme and I thought this was a great choice. There was one little problem, though. When I sent Tobias down to our wine shop to pick up a bottle to accompany our brunch this past Sunday, he came back with a California sparkling wine, rather than real Champagne. Apparently the cheapest bottle of real French Champagne at the store was 55 dollars. Yikes! I thought "Ohp, Sam is not going to go for this. She specifically stipulated real Champagne!" But I asked nicely and Sam has agreed to let me be an official WBW 25 participant, despite my shameless flouting of the rules.
So the bottle we ended up with was a Roederer Estate Brut from the Anderson Valley of California, which isn't a Champagne, of course, but it's pretty darn close. The Roederer winery was founded by the president of Champagne Roederer, the winery that makes Cristal (accusations of racism aside, I would love to try Cristal one day). The California branch of Roederer opened in the 80s and they've been making their Anderson Valley Brut since 1988.
There is a lot about how this wine is made on the Roederer website, but here are the salient points:
- made from pinot noir and chardonnay grapes
- made from grapes of multiple vintages
- aged in French oak
- a team from the Roederer winery in France comes over to help blend it. Fancy!
We tried the wine as part of a brunch and we invited Abu, my friend Ms. T, and her daughter to join us and give their perceptions of the wine as well. Everyone seemed to enjoy the wine, but I think Tobias and I were the most excited about it, being the most geeky.
This wine was full of surprises for me. The first surprise was how far the cork flew when Tobias opened the bottle. If only we'd been outside, I'm sure it would have gone into orbit. As it was, it hit the ceiling hard, flew across the room, and landed on the front porch of Sahsez' Playmobil Victorian mansion. The second surprise was the amount of bubbles. There were thousands of them! It was so much more bubbly than any other sparkling wine I've tried. I'm not sure if cork flying distance and number of bubbles are generally considered the marks of a good sparkling wine, but in this case, it seemed to be so.
More surprises: the gorgeous, delicate palate of this wine. Very minerally, not fruity, but so easy to drink and with a nice smooth mouthfeel. There was pineapple and citrus and melon on the nose, once the bubbles calmed down enough for people to stick their noses in there.
People seem to enjoy drinking sparkling wines more often alone than with food. I think I might enjoy this, especially the classic, romantic Champagne-for-two-in-a-fancy-hotel-room thing. But for my first foray into the world of really good sparkling wines, I wanted to try it with brunch. So, to start, we had a salad with a raspberry balsamic vinaigrette, strawberries, chevre and toasted almonds. With the strawberries, it was an obvious pairing choice, and I think it went beautifully. For a second course we had quiche lorraine, which was still good, but was slightly overpowering for the wine, because of the pancetta I put in it.
In future, I would definitely buy this wine again, and would probably pair it with the salad again as well. I'm also itching to try a real Champagne, and maybe pair it with a nice seafoody pasta. But mostly, I'm looking forward to February, when my wedding anniversary rolls around, and I have a good excuse to get a really nice bottle of Champagne, and have it with nothing but strawberries and a fine man.
thanks for taking part Rebecca. Sorry about encouraging people to part with so much money. I hope the round up which i will publish shortly, will give you some ideas for more reasonably priced Champagnes.
Posted by: sam | September 18, 2006 at 02:17 PM