Well, it’s that time of year, so in the spirit of the season, for my monthly wine segment I brought some bubbly for us to drink. There are plenty of $40 meh options out there, so I thought it would be fun to try to prove that you can spend less and get a great glass of sparking wine. Instead of the names that everyone recognizes, what I did was bring some bottles that might not be so well-known but that have a lower cost than that one that rhymes with Groove Plookoe (no need to name names!) . We talked about the history of champagne, how to correctly open a bottle of bubbly, AND a little bit about sparkling wines around the world.
Click on the picture below to watch the clip from Roger’s show.
As most people know, I’m on a one-woman crusade to move my friends away from oaky, buttery California Chardonnay and over to the more elegant style of White Burgundy, which shows off the true beauty of this ever-so-popular grape. So when I did my little TV gig this month, I brought three examples of whites from France that actually taste like Chardonnay and not like pencil shavings dipped in Crisco. OK, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but you get the gist of what I’m trying to do …
All three of these wines are readily available and as “starter burgs”, an added bonus is that they are all under $20. That said, many of us Burgheads would rather drink them than Cali Chard that costs twice as much!
Click on the picture below to watch the white Burgundies clip from the TV show.
Pouring White Burgundies on the Roger Hedgecock TV Show
The wines poured this month:
Louis Jadot Pouilly Fuissé ($18)
Louis Latour Grand Ardeche ($13)
William Fevre Chablis Champs Royaux ($17)
If you try these wines and find that you enjoy them so much you’d like to sample some higher end White Burgundies, see below for links to wine stores in SoCal where they can help you find the ones that fit the flavor profile that you prefer. The next level of quality, 1er Cru, tends to be priced at $30-$80, and the highest level (Grand Cru) is typically $100-$300. But any wine lover that has had Grand Cru from a great vintage will tell you that they can be life-changingly ethereal. Really. Hey, I wouldn’t have chosen it for my crusade if I wasn’t serious about this, would I?
http://www.vintagewinessd.com (Vintage Wines, San Diego)
