There is a special relationship between women and champagne. It took me several long and lonely years to figure this out. I am an expert at obfuscating the obvious to myself, therefore not greatly surprised at the time it took me. And I have pronounced on sloth before so no surprise that I haven’t made much use of this knowledge. So I take other men’s wives to taste bubbles. Mostly because I can’t take my own.
Once a year the piquant town of Franschoek holds a bubbles festival. Bubbles as in sparkling wine, not soap bubbles.(1) The first weekend in December provides balmy days in the valley enabling an afternoon in the sun sipping wine. It is also a social occasion and the ladies dress up. And down. Hemlines goes up, necklines down. I just enjoy the view.
Quick technical bit. Sparkling wine is a wine with lots of CO2 bubbles in it. The gas is in solution in the wine and at higher pressure than atmosphere. So it wants to get out of there. The gas can get into the wine bottle in three ways. Forced carbonation, Sodastreaming the wine in the bottle and putting a cork in it. A more expensive method is to prevent the CO2 formed during secondary fermentation to leave the tank. Thus pressurised the wine is bottled. Both of these will (or should) be labelled sparkling wine. The most of expensive and original way is to let secondary fermentation take place in the bottle. Then tilt the bottles to collect the yeast. Freeze the yeast in the neck, take out the cork let the pressure blow the yeast out and quickly put a new cork in. Wines made in this way in the Champagne region of France may be called Champagne. Same method in the Cape produces a Methode Cap Classique (MCC) (2). In short Champagne and MCC are sparkling wine, but sparkling wine is not necessarily MCC. The bubbles festival has MCC and champagne.
The Blonde, Legs and a friend of Legs, all blondes, climbed aboard the Honda. Off we went to have some bubbles. Some stereotypes were reinforced on the day. The women dressed up, this man did not. Also not one of the women was ready on time. And none of the blondes are stupid. OK, strictly writing that is not reinforcing a stereotype as such, but more of a debunking. Moving swiftly along then... All three women were dressed in a fashion that made it difficult for me to maintain eye contact. They knew what to wear to accentuate the positive.
The first time I went to the festival I had clear ideas about what would happen. I would like the local bubbles better than the fancy French stuff. We have sunshine, they don’t up in Champagne. Sunshine is good. It was a jingoistic outlook on vino. Luckily the alcohol served as lubricant, because when that paradigm shifted, it shifted a long way rapidly. The champagnes were fabulous. Bollinger, Taittinger, Mumm and the widow Clicquot. All wonderful. I realised that in this case sunshine might not be an asset. A bit like skin cancer then.(3) After the pain from that revelation subsided, I realised that MMC producers don’t try and emulate the French. They can’t. The raw materials are too different. What they make are cracking good times in a bottle.
At the first festival I also discovered the sounds and looks of Sterling EQ. Since then I wanted a cellist for Christmas. The cellist changed since then, but my sentiment did not. I also want a violinist. I just looove classical music with a modern interpretation. Looking at my tasting notes I found the Shiraz from Nitida a little strange, everything from Krone delightful especially their flagship. Villiera is just my favourite wine producer and their bubbles are house wine for the play group. My favourite wine maker remains Ms Melanie van der Merwe and her Tanzanite wines, though they were sadly absent from this year festivities. I hope it is because the wine is sold out and not other reasons.
This year I bought a very different Sauvignon Blanc based MCC from Bramon. Wine from Plet, Not your normal wine growing area. A bottle of Genevieve also hopped on board. And once again a bottle of Nicholas Charles Krone Marque 1 from the House of Krone. To my palate the best local bubbles and well worth the price. His day job is winemaker at Groote Post, but I also made a donation (4) to the Lukas Wentzel retirement fund with his eponymous MCC.
Food at the festival is delectable. The only way the strawberries could be improved is if it started it's way into my body with not my own hand, but that of Claudia Schiffer. Slightly troubling is the fact that the only water they sold at The Bubbles festival, was still water.
(1) That would make it a foam party.
(2) Notice the portentous French spelling.
(3) A R100 to the charity of your choice if you can find any work published before this where skin cancer is favourably compared to champagne.
(4) OK, bought a bottle
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