Having had such fantastic champagne at Christmas, my husband and I took a serious look at our stock and discussed what we wanted to put in the fridge for New Year's Eve. We had a lot of good choices...but we both agreed that having been disappointed with the bubbles in some of our recent bottles, we wanted a 'sure thing' for the evening, something that would taste great and be bubbly enough. In went a bottle of Billecart-Salmon brut reserve, my favourite of the Billecart's that we own.
I guess there's no such thing as a 'sure thing', though. We wrestled opened the champagne early on in the evening, the cork being particularly difficult to remove. It looked and tasted OK on opening. But halfway through my first glass, and unusually for this champagne, the bubbles disappeared. I couldn't believe it!! My husband and I agreed that, if we were drinking the brut reserve for the first time, we wouldn't have known it was an off bottle, just thought that it was only an OK champagne (and disappointing for the price). But knowing how stunning and bubbly this champagne usually is, we knew something wasn't quite right. Hopefully our one remaining bottle of this wine will be in top shape.
So good-bye to 2010. It went out with a bit of a fizzle, but we're really looking forward to 2011 and have a bottle of Maison Lenique in the fridge to welcome in the New Year!
Showing posts with label dud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dud. Show all posts
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
I Got a Dud
It's one of the worst sounds in the world - the soft little 'pffft' that happens when you open a dud bottle of champagne. And that's what I heard on Saturday, when I opened one of the bottles from my case of Maison Lenique.
It was so sad. We had planned a nice meal, my husband having cooked an amazing lemon and caper chicken, to celebrate both a change in job for me and the fact that our 17-year-old cat has lived for a month despite the 'days-to-weeks' diagnosis provided by the vet. But there it was, flat champagne, tasting of vinegar. It's only happened to me once before, years ago, and it was no less disappointing then.
So, we ate without bubbles, and threw another bottle of the Maison Lenique in the fridge. We opened it on Sunday with a resounding 'POP' - and drank it while we watched a Sarah Silverman DVD. It would have been fantastic with the chicken, but we enjoyed it with a laugh instead.
Post-script: My husband used part of the dud bottle of Maison Lenique a couple of weeks later to make the most fantastic champagne risotto. While it's not how I thought we would enjoy it, enjoy it we nonetheless did!
It was so sad. We had planned a nice meal, my husband having cooked an amazing lemon and caper chicken, to celebrate both a change in job for me and the fact that our 17-year-old cat has lived for a month despite the 'days-to-weeks' diagnosis provided by the vet. But there it was, flat champagne, tasting of vinegar. It's only happened to me once before, years ago, and it was no less disappointing then.
So, we ate without bubbles, and threw another bottle of the Maison Lenique in the fridge. We opened it on Sunday with a resounding 'POP' - and drank it while we watched a Sarah Silverman DVD. It would have been fantastic with the chicken, but we enjoyed it with a laugh instead.
Post-script: My husband used part of the dud bottle of Maison Lenique a couple of weeks later to make the most fantastic champagne risotto. While it's not how I thought we would enjoy it, enjoy it we nonetheless did!
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