While my husband was in Paris just before Christmas, he bought me a bottle of champagne as a Christmas gift. Not just any champagne, but one that was produced in an environmentally friendly manner - no pesticides, no synthetic chemicals - a 1999 grand cru from Andre Beaufort.
Like me, you may be thinking, "what sort of granola-cruncher would bother doing something like this with champagne?" Well, apparently the winemaker developed an allergy to the fertilisers he was using in his vineyard and started producing wines sans chemicals so that he could continue in his livelihood. And I have to say, well done to him, you don't miss them a bit, and his talent would have been wasted.
As is our tradition on New Year's Eve, we celebrated with a homemade apple pie and this wonderful bottle of champagne. It was the perfect compliment to the pie - slightly sweet because of all of the apple-fruit flavours in it, but dry at the same time. It was a big wine, with lots of flavour and an incredibly long-lasting finish. This is a wine-lover's champagne - without the bubbles, this would still have been incredibly drinkable.
I haven't seen this producer in the UK before, so I don't know how widely available the wines are outside of France. But I will look for it, as I'd like to try more. It was a great start to the New Year.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Even though I don't think we can call champagne food per se (or can we, if considering it what you could consume in a 'liquid lunch' or the fact it is made of grapes?) I have linked you in my food blog as a food blog I fancy.
ReplyDeleteWell, I do talk about what I'm eating when I'm drinking champagne, so that should count!!
ReplyDelete