SPIRITS: It’s fizzy, fuzzy, cheap and buzzy

Freixenet is a pleasant sparkling wine from Spain at a price that’s affordable.
Freixenet is a pleasant sparkling wine from Spain at a price that’s affordable.

— Champagne is certainly not the best wine, but it is the wine the ladies prefer. Sacrifices have to be made to their tastes in the hope that we will be favoured by some pleasant prattle and the blithe bursts of a delicate erotic gaity. In general the arrival of champagne is the cue for a gentle liberty to begin to reassert its right.

- Grimod de La Reyniere

Gore Vidal should have said that one should never turn down the opportunity to go on TV or to drink Champagne. Even - or maybe especially - cheap “Champagne,” aka sparkling wine.

There is a trend among some food and drink writers - the above-quoted Grimod de La Reyniere may have been the first real gastronomic critic, but I doubthe was the first to dismiss sparkling wine as girly stuff - to declare Champagne overpriced and overrated.

But the truth is that it is a magical drink, and every time I sip the pinging stuff I know exactly what the cellar master of the Abbey of Hautvillers, a monk named Dom Perignon, meant when he called out to his brother monks that he was “drinking stars.”

A century of ubiquitous carbonated soft drinks might have deadened our palate to the percolating comic sensation of a mouthful of Champagne; every sip begs consideration of the balance between sweet and tart, between mineral and ethereal. And the best Champagne - which is generally the most expensive, though marketing and fashion have their influence - is among the most sublime beverages available to those who’ve attained majority.

But while expensive Champagne is generally better than the cheap stuff, the cheap stuff has its advantages.

First, and most obviously, it’s cheap. And not just cheap relative to expensive Champagne, it’s cheap relative to most other alcoholic beverages. I have drunk $5 bottles of Cold Duck and thoroughly enjoyed them. I have had lots of inferior sparkling wines, and most of them were a great deal of fun.

Philip Martin is blogging daily with reviews of movies, TV, music and more at Blood, Dirt & Angels.

But what happens whensomeone gives you a good bottle of Champagne - say a bottle of Veuve Clicquot or Krug Grande Cuvee? Well, usually we hang on to it for a couple of years, waiting for an occasion worthy of popping its cork. (We’re doing better, we recently polished off a good bottle within a couple of weeks of receiving it.)

The cheap stuff - the point isn’t to define a specific price tag but rather a zone where guilt and discomfort begin to seep in; some of you might consider Moet White Star pretty affordable but I’m thinking more along the lines of Freixenet, a sparkling wine from Spain which has none of that baggage.

While it retains the ritual (and mildly dangerous) cork-popping, it doesn’tcome freighted with expectations. We expect it to fizz and be cold and lightly acid. We toast it and throw it back and feel good about ourselves. The cheap stuff can be sloshed and spilled over third-base coaches and equipment managers. It can and should be drunk casually. Chill it and kill it.

And the cheap stuff is also fit to be mixed.

These days, the idea of the “Champagne cocktail” has been obscured by brunchy drinks like mimosas and bellinis or my personal favorite, the Kir Royale, which is a dollop (about 10 milliliters) of cassis in a flute topped off by Champagne. The classic Champagne cocktail involves bitters, a sugar cube (or, if you must, loose sugar), a twist of lemon peel for garnish and,naturally, Champagne.

Then there’s the French 75, which is basically a sidecar with Champagne added. Make it like this:

Downmarket French 75

Add a squeeze of lemon juice, a little simple syrup (sugar dissolved in water), one part cognac (or gin) and three parts Champagne or sparkling wine to an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake well and strain into Champagne flutes. Top the flutes with Champagne or sparkling wine and garnish with lemon.

E-mail:

[email protected]

Style, Pages 47 on 01/09/2011

Upcoming Events