Make your holidays sparkle

REALCUISINE | Julianne Glatz

“Remember gentlemen, it’s not just France we are fighting for, it’s Champagne!” — Winston S. Churchill One of the most popular holiday drinks is Champagne. And with good reason. No other beverage shouts, “Let’s celebrate!” quite like Champagne. But much of what’s called Champagne really isn’t. Just as Kleenex has become synonymous with any brand of tissue, many people refer to any kind of sparkling wine as Champagne. Strictly speaking, however, true Champagne only comes from the Champagne region in northern France; the rest is sparkling wine. Legend has it that Champagne was discovered by Dom Pérignon, a blind monk who was cellar master in his monastery for 47 years until he died in 1715. “I’m drinking stars,” he’s reputed to have said. Modern wine historians, however, credit Dom Pérignon not with creating the bubbles but with finding a way to keep them in the bottle: the Champagne cork, which keeps the precious and pressurized contents from exploding.

Champagne from the top French producers is awesome: toasty, yeasty and elegant. It’s also expensive and something I can only rarely experience. Fortunately, there are lots of excellent sparkling wines from around the world that are delicious and much more affordable. Of course, there are the really cheap sparklers. The difference is in how they’re made. Making good sparkling wine is a tedious and difficult process – easily the most complex and timeconsuming in all winemaking. It involves rotating the bottles, a second fermentation, and dégorgement – a process in which the neck of the bottle, which has been stored upside down, accruing sediment in the neck, is dipped in a frozen brine to create an icy plug of sediment that’s allowed to pop free of the bottle, after which the bottle is quickly recorked. These sparklers are labeled “méthode champenoise,” “fermented in the bottle,” or “traditional method.” There are reasonably decent bottles for between $10 and $30 – but from there the prices go up into the stratosphere. Many very good sparklers are made in the United States, some with prices to match their quality, but there are others that are much more affordable; some are even from the big French producers that have established wineries in America, mostly in California. There’s even a good New Mexican sparkler, Gruet, that’s quite good and reasonably priced.

Those cheap sparklers – some almost as cheap as soda – are made through the Charmat bulk process and are so labeled. Fermentation is carried out in a series of tanks. They’re not bad for mixing, but, drunk by themselves, they’re thin and either sour or overly sweet and much more likely to result in a nasty headache the next day than those that are made traditionally.

Another important component of drinking sparkling wine is the glass. I’m not sure how the idea of saucer-shaped glasses got started. They did look cool in old movies, but no true wine lover would be caught dead drinking sparkling wine in anything but a narrow flute or tulip-shaped glass. The narrow glasses keep the bubbles (to which end the winemaker has expended much effort) in, unlike those wide glasses, which let the bubbles escape.

Probably the holiday most associated with drinking sparkling wine is New Year’s Eve. New Year’s celebrations have always seemed a bit awkward to me. The silly hats, noisemakers and excessive drinking just feel wrong, somehow. We had a party at my house every year when I was growing up. There was little alcohol but lots of food, always including my mom’s deviled hot dogs and Swedish meatballs. Everyone was boisterous and jolly, first watching the ball drop in Times Square on the television, then counting down the minutes until it was midnight here, kissing and tooting horns. All I ever wanted to do – after I’d had my fill of deviled dogs and meatballs – was to creep off to my bedroom by myself, reflect about events of the past year, and think about what the next year would be like.

When my husband and I were college students and in the early years of our marriage, we’d envision our perfect New Year’s. We’d be alone in an isolated rustic cabin, with snow blanketing the ground and a beautiful starlit sky. There’d be a huge fireplace with crackling logs. We’d lie on a thick fluffy rug in front of the fire, plan for our future, and then . . . well, you get the idea. Unfortunately, that one remained a vision; we never found that cabin in the woods.

Since moving into our old farmhouse, some of our best New Years have centered on a huge bonfire. During the week between Christmas and New Year, we heap boxes, wrapping paper, fallen branches and sometimes even broken furniture into a great pile that towers over our heads. At midnight we light the fire, warm ourselves by the blaze, and, yes, toast the New Year with sparkling wine.

Whether you celebrate the holidays with Champagne, sparkling wine or sparkling apple juice, have a wonderful time and stay safe.

Contact Julianne Glatz at realcuisine.jg@gmail.com.