While it may look and taste as though this holiday pork roast dinner is labor-intensive, you’ll be surprised to find that it takes little time to prepare, and a good part of it can be made in advance.

So with the time you’ve saved, pop open a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate the season. Some things to know:

• Sparkling white wines are often referred to as Champagne. But only those produced in the Champagne region in northeast France are authorized to use the name spelled with a capital C. Sparkling wines made with similar methods are called spumante in Italy, cava in Spain and vin mousseux in France when coming from any region besides Champagne. Those wines that are made according to the same process as true Champagne indicate “methode champenoise” on the label.

• Sparkling wines can cost less than $10 a bottle and as much as hundreds of dollars. The sweetest are labeled doux; for a less sugary taste, look for demi-sec (drier), sec (dry), extra sec (extra dry) or brut (bone dry).

• You can sip sparkling white wine on its own, or pair it with salty appetizers, seafood or spicy food. These wines should always be served cold preferably in tall, narrow glasses to preserve the bubbles.

Third generation winemaker Gina Gallo of award-winning Gallo of Sonoma Winery in Healdsburg, Calif., offers these answers to questions regarding wine for holiday parties:
Q. Which are the trendy wines for holiday entertaining?

A. Particularly festive wines this time of year are California sparkling wines, which are a nice alternative to Champagnes, and rose wines that are beautiful shades of pink and always look great on a holiday table. And it’s hard to go wrong with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc to start a meal.
Q. How much wine should be ordered per guest?

A. Generally a bottle of wine is equivalent to four glasses of wine. For a dinner party, where wine is the only alcoholic beverage being served, you can estimate that each guest will consume about 2-1/2 glasses of wine.
Q. How many varieties should the host offer?

A. You should offer at least one red wine and one white wine at parties. But if you are serving many different courses, you may wish to highlight a specific wine to complement each course.
Q. What stemware is best for serving wine?

A. The best is a standard long-stemmed 12-ounce glass with a clear bowl and thin rim. The bowl makes it easy to swirl the wine, capturing its aroma.
Q. What are the best corkscrews?

A. A “deluxe” corkscrew that comes with a foil cutter is a great tool because it makes opening wine fast and easy. If you don’t have a deluxe version, the standard corkscrew works just fine as well.

The night they invented champagne lasted a long time, about four years. The French would like to take full credit for the creation of sparkling wine, but in fact, they had help from Spain and England.

According to some historians, climate played a role, too, in the creation of champagne. In the 1490s a climate shift brought colder weather into France. The northern Champagne region had competed well with the southern Burgundy area, until cold winters began to affect their vineyards. The late harvested wine stopped fermenting in the casks in the cold weather. Fermentation began again in the warming spring. This double fermentation produced carbon dioxide or bubbles. Thin sparkling wine was not appealing to wine merchants supplying the bustling markets of Paris. Some of the wine was exported to England.

At the same time vineyards in Champagne began to convert from red wine to white wine. The Champagne growers planted vin gris, a red wine grape that produced a pale wine with a grayish tinge. In the late 1660s Dom Pierre Perignon, a Benedictine monk was sent to the Champagne region to be the new cellar master at the Abbey of Hautvillers, near Rheims. His superiors directed him to eliminate the bubbles from the wine, and to find ways to increase revenue.

As Dom Perignon struggled with his task of subduing effervescence, the English added sugar to white wine and regarded the bubbles as festive. Sparkling wine became a hit at the decadent court of Charles II. Seizing upon this fashionable trend, Dom Perignon reversed himself and began to experiment with making more bubbles. He had problems controlling fermentation. Perignon bottled the wine, allowing it to ferment a second time in the bottle, instead of the cask. Much later the French patented the technique, calling it methode champenoise.

Advanced knowledge of science allowed succeeding wine makers to exert control over the fermentation. Don Perignon’s champagne batches were hit and miss. Some years he lost up to 90 percent of his production due to exploding casks and bottles. This added to the rarity and expense of the wine.
 
While he could not completely control the process, Perignon realized that changing the bottles in use at the time might help reduce breakage. The thin-walled, apple shaped bottles with long narrow necks could not withstand the pressure of the fizzing champagne at ninety pounds per square inch. Don Pernignon convinced the growing glass-manufacturing business in the area to make thicker bottles in the classic pear shape we recognize today. The old stoppers made of chestnut wood, dipped in tallow, could not stand up to the pressure either, so Don Perignon turned to Spain to provide him with corks.

Don Perignon is also credited with being one of the first wine makers to blend wines. A fellow Benedictine cellar master at a nearby abbey adopted his blends emphasizing clarity and complexity, along with his methods of fermentation. He continued Perignon’s custom of adding a liqueur de tirage just before bottling to insure a second fermentation. Today wine makers’ liqueur de tirage includes sugar, wine and yeast.

In a book published in 1718, Canon Jean Godinot claimed he’d obtained Dom Perignon’s liqueur de tirage recipe, a bottle of wine, a pound of sugar, 5-6 pitted peaches, powdered nutmeg and cinnamon and a half bottle of good brandy. The mixture was boiled, strained and boiled again.

Many recipes using champagne were published around the same time. Francois Massialot suggested a fish dish, browning fillets in butter and mushrooms, adding a half bottle of champagne and then thickening with a crayfish coulis. Sounds delicious.

The champagne craze drove prices up wildly. In Paris a bottle might sell for nearly $400. King Louis XIV’s court insisted on champagne for their elaborate parties and the English court also continued their infatuation with the bubbly beverage. Champagne became known as the wine of kings. Even today champagne continues to be the drink in demand for festive occasions. Almost half of all champagne sold is purchased between Thanksgiving and New Years’ according to wine maven Lisa Shea.

I found some of the details on the invention of champagne in a book by Joan De Jane, “The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine food, Chic Cafes, Style, Sophistication and Glamour.” It was the best history book I read in 2005, full of fun facts, serious scholarship and beautifully written. A must for fashionistas and Francophiles.

I also recommend Lisa Shea’s website, Wineintro.com. Lisa has compiled an amazing collection of champagne recipes. I liked Carol Channing’s champagne cocktail and the Chambord raspberry-flavored champagne, a twist on the Bellini with a fresh raspberry in the bottom of the glass.

King Louis XIV served his champagne in flutes. About 20 years ago, the old-fashioned flute finally eclipsed the wide, low coupe glasses that came into fashion in the 1800s. If you stay in on New Year’s Eve, rent “Gigi”, sip from your flute, and let Maurice Chevalier remind you “the night they invented champagne… no man or woman has ever been as happy as we are tonight.” Happy New Year!

In “Everyday Dining With Wine”, master sommelier Andrea Immer suggests a one-plate meal or a festive first course of mussels and champagne. She writes, “The crispness of the wine brings out the briny-sweet taste of the shellfish” Andrea Immer’s complete wine course on DVD is available on her web site at andreaimmer.com

Champagne-steamed Mussels

Ingredients >
2 pounds mussels
2 tablespoons unsalted mussels
1/2 cup sourdough pretzel crumbs, crushed in a blender or food processor
1 medium shallot, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 plum tomatoes, cored and chopped
1 cup champagne
1/2 cup fish stock or bottled clam juice
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chervil or tarragon

Method >
* Clean the mussels by scrubbing their shells with a brush while rinsing under cold running water. If necessary, use a paring knife to tug and cut out the weedy beards coming out of the bottom of the shells. Pick through the mussels and discard any with broken or open shells that won’t close when you tap them.
* Heat l tablespoon of butter in a small skillet over medium-high heat. When the foam subsides and the butter just begins to brown add the crushed pretzels and toss to coat. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring until the crumbs are crisped, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.
* Heat a large dry skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mussels, shallot, garlic, and tomatoes and stir to combine. Cook for 2 minutes and then add the champagne and the fish stock. Continue cooking until the shells open, about another 4 minutes. Transfer the mussels to serving bowls with a slotted spoon and continue to simmer the liquid to reduce it slightly, scraping up any bits stuck to the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.
* Remove the pan from the heat and swirl in the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter. Stir in the chervil. Pour the broth over the mussels, sprinkle pretzel crumbs over each portion and serve immediately. Serves six as a first course.

Recommended champagne to pair with steamed mussels: Friexenet Carta Nevada or Paul Cheaneau Brut

Important note on storage: Do not store mussels in airtight containers or in water. They must breathe. Cover lightly with wet towel, stored in mesh type bag. Purchase mussels the same day you plan to cook them or store overnight in refrigerator.

Here’s a round of stellar wine choices to toast the New Year. The focus is on sparkling wines, ranging from the reigning Champagne champions and standouts to smaller, lesser known growers like Chartogne-Taillet.

Duval-Leroy Brut Champagne NV > A big, full-bodied bubbly, featuring graphite, toast, lemon and nut aromas and flavors. Balanced, with an assertive finish. Will improve with a few months of cellaring. Drink now through 2009. 35,000 cases made.

Charles Heidsieck Brut Champagne Reserve NV > Plenty of graphite and honey flavors mark this well-structured, effusive Champagne. Lemon, dough and vanilla accents are also present. Finishes with a tactile sensation around the gums. Drink now through 2010.

Domaine Carneros Brut Carneros 2003 > Graceful and complex, with fresh cherry, spice and citrus aromas and impeccably balanced and well-structured flavors that emphasize creamy toastiness. The finish fans out and lingers, turning delicate and fleshy. Drink now through 2009. 30,000 cases made.

Moet & Chandon Brut Champagne Blanc 1999 > Fragrant, delivering plenty of toast, butter, vanilla and citrus aromas and flavors, backed by a gossamer frame and a supple mousse. Fine length. Not for the long haul but delicious now. Drink now through 2010.

Taittinger Brut Champagne La Francaise NV > Shows elegance and finesse but also an understated power as the initial richness gives way to the firm structure, setting the stage for biscuit, honey and ginger notes. Fine length. Drink now through 2010.

Bollinger Brut Champagne Special Cuvee NV > Compact and yeasty, this bubbly evokes bread dough and grapefruit flavors backed by verve and a chalky texture. It has a fine mousse and a lingering finish. Drink now through 2010. 20,000 cases imported.

Chartogne-Taillet Blanc de Blancs Champagne NV > Crisp, light and airy, yet with everything in the right proportion. Vibrant and focused, showing ginger, lemon and mineral elements. Perhaps a tad on the sweet side but balanced overall. Drink now.

Gloria Ferrer Brut Sonoma County Sonoma NV > A delicious mouthful of bubbly. Smooth, rich and creamy, revealing layers of black cherry, vanilla and ginger, with a hint of lemon drop. Finishes with a long, refreshing aftertaste of mineral and fruit. Drink now. 93,500 cases made.

Mumm Napa Brut Napa Valley Prestige NV > Enticing vanilla, floral and fresh bread dough aromas. Lean, firm, intense and focused on the palate, with a beam of citrus, apple and pear notes. Cleansing aftertaste. Drink now through 2009. 180,000 cases made.

Lucien Albrecht Brut Blanc de Blancs Cremant d’Alsace NV > A hint of pencil shavings and citrus flavors mark this appealing cremant. Light- to medium-bodied, with good intensity and length. Drink now. 3,000 cases imported.

Make it your resolution to try more champagnes throughout the year. Champagne is perfectly married to special occasions, including New Year’s, weddings, engagement parties, birthdays and dinner parties.

“It’s relatively expensive, which is why champagne is reserved for celebrations,” explains Jamie Wolff, owner of Chambers Street Wines in Manhattan. “However, prices for champagne are near the same as a good bottle of wine. Champagne is great with food, as the tart aspect goes well with rich dishes.”

Le Method Champenois > While the French monk Dom Perignon certainly contributed to advances in champagne’s production, he is mistakenly credited with inventing the beverage. No one is quite sure who first discovered the drink, some uphold that it was created by accident, though its first appearance was around 1535 in Languedoc, a former province of France.

The name Champagne was legally protected under the Treaty of Madrid in 1891 to signify only sparkling wine produced in its namesake region, a mild northern province in France. This right was even reaffirmed in the Treaty of Versailles following World War I.

Other bubbly wines not from the Champagne region sometimes use the term “sparkling wine” on their label. Some producers even use the term methode champenois, meaning “champagne method.” But regardless of whether they use Chardonnay, Meunier or Pinot Noir grapes, these wines cannot be called champagne unless those grapes were grown in the Champagne region and processed in the traditional method.

Only this region can produce the wine because the grapes used for Champagne need to be grown in an area where climate conditions favor a short growing season. The grapes can therefore be picked earlier, when sugar levels are lower and acid levels higher, yielding the unique flavor profile.

The fermentation of the grapes follows the same path as any other wine. First, carbon dioxide resulting from the transformation of sugar into alcohol is allowed to escape. This is when the blend, or cuvee, is assembled, using wines from various years to create a consistent product.

“A blend of different years is necessary because it permits the producer to maintain a consistent style,” Wolff says. “If you buy a bottle tomorrow, it will taste the same as one you tasted two years ago.”

The blended wine is then put in bottles along with yeast and a small amount of sugar and finally, corked.

Champagne’s effervescent quality is born out of the secondary fermentation, during which the bottles are stored horizontally in a wine cellar. The carbon dioxide formed in this process becomes trapped inside the bottle, keeping it dissolved in the wine. The amount of added sugar will determine the amount of pressure inside the bottle.

The champagne is then aged for a span of a year and a half to three years, after which the bottles are rotated a small amount each day and gradually moved toward a vertical position in a process called riddling.

Related Links > http://www.chambersstwines.com

Or else “drinking the stars…” as alleged by its spiritual father Brother Dom Perignon. Reference of course to the world famous, most noble of all carbonated wines, Champagne!

The Festive Season is filled with Celebration Days, or else Champagne Days, and it is no coincidence that a “cork is popped” every time we want to announce a joyous occasion. Happy occasions? Not so much for almighty Napoleon, a personal friend of Jean-Remy Moet. Forgetting to renew his order of the noble wine, somewhere around 1814, cost him, what else, his defeat in Waterloo!

If one wishes to hear the “duchess sigh”, one needs to abandon the brute habit of crudely ejecting the cork, after having shaken her violently, making a horrendous noise.

This is better understood when one observes (in awe, no doubt) the process of “swording” a champagne bottle, the ritual of “sabrage du Champange” never before has “decapitation” been so elegant!

Her homeland is France and her natural abode is the northernmost vineyard,  around Reims,  150 km northeast of Paris. There, stretch 345.000 acres of vineyards in a chalky ground with limestone that combined with frost and low temperatures bless her with unique exquisiteness.

Responsible for the creation of the first carbonated wine, is Benedict Monk Dom Pérignon who experienced a rather unpleasant event. In the beginning of the 18th century, in one of the dark cellars of Hautviller, temperatures fell so low that fermentation was interrupted, it continued inside the bottle. Pressure caused the “eruption” of the cork and  voila, the first champagne!

There are more than 250.000.000 ticklish bubbles in every bottle of 750ml, exactly due to CO2.

Since then, the noble white Chardonnay offers its finesse, the red Pinot noir adds to the body and the Pinot menieur ensures quantity!

Her creation is so complex, that it actually explains the high price!  It involves double fermentation, a classical white wine processing and a second one in the bottle. The secret of every great house, however, is in the “brew”, the chef de caves are the specialised tasters who achieve this.

There are various great house and famous are the “widows” that rule them, like Cliquot, Posardin, Lily Bollinger, Οrly Roederer as well as the widow of Nonancout that leads the famous house of Laurent Perrier.

Other great houses are: Krug, Moët et Chandon, Mumm, Heidsieck, Deutz, Taittinger, Pol Roger. Which ever one you choose, search insistently for the year 1990, the best in this decade and enjoy in luxury.

Choosing the right glass for serving wine is as important as it is fun

Pliny (23 – 79 AD) wrote about gold and silver drinking vessels being abandoned in favour of glass, which were often priced as high as those they replaced. Bonifacio Veronese’s 16th century ‘Last Supper’ includes modern style wine glasses with a stem and foot.

The oldest surviving European wine glasses with a stem and foot are 15th century enameled goblets (a goblet is a glass holding more than four ounces of liquid). Quality crystal wine glasses were being produced in France near the end of the 18th century, while wine glasses during the 19th century were often produced in sets, with a dozen each for port and sherry, burgundy and claret, champagne and liqueur glasses.

A single melting furnace in 1872 in Zwiesel near the Bavarian forest was the beginning of the glassmaking industry, with which this small town is still associated. Today, this is a successful business owing its fortunes to a combination of craftsmanship handed down from generation to generation and a progressive approach to materials and technology. This medium-sized company has earned worldwide recognition for the beauty and quality of its products. 

The Bavarians are masters in making wine glasses and, like their rivals Riedel of Austria, wished to hold a workshop to find the right glass for Commandaria and our indigenous grape variety, Maratheftiko. I have recently attended an event organized by the Cyprus Vines Council and Cyprus Sommelier Association. The venue was the luxury, five-star Intercontinental Aphrodite Hills resort. The judges were mainly winemakers of Maratheftiko and Commandaria as well as members of the Sommelier Association and wine journalists. The event was orchestrated by Giuseppe Vaccarini, Director of the International Sommelier Association.

The judges had to decide which two glasses from two rounds of five were best for the wine and reflected its characteristics. In the final round, the process was repeated with the four best and the glass model that received the most points was selected as the glass for Maratheftiko and Commandaria. After two and half hours, the judges decided on a Top Ten line code number 8432/130 (selling price at £3.35) for Maratheftiko and Diva code number 8015/4 (selling price £2.55) for our precious Commandaria.

Choosing wine glasses, also known as stemware, to reflect both the best of the wine and your own personal taste is a bit tiring and tricky, but it is fun. The shape, size and colour of a wine glass can dramatically alter your perception of the wine that’s contained in it. My only comment on this important event was that, concerning Maratheftiko, I believe that finding a glass at this stage was a bit premature. Although this is the most promising indigenous grape variety we still do not know how it will develop and what style and characteristics it will adopt. Then we might need to repeat the process.

Wines of the week >
2004 Kamanterena Maratheftiko, Pafos Regional, Alcohol Volume 13%
A bit of a surprise this wine as I was not expecting it so soon. Dark garnet colour, big, forward black fruit scent with intriguing aromatics, mountain herbs and wood. It leads into a tart, heavy tannic flavour with some black cherry fruit which opens up after time in the glass. It is young yet and surely it will develop with time in the bottle.

2002 Barba Yiannis, Vouni Panayias, Panayia, Pafos, Maratheftiko, Alcohol volume 12.5% This silver medal winner at the 1st Cyprus Competition is named after the late father of Andreas Kyriakides, owner and winemaker of Vouni Panayias winery. The wine has a dark, slightly hazy ruby colour. Ripe blackcurrant, cherry/berry and aromatic cedar, a big and complex aroma leaps from the glass. Fruit ripe flavours, consistent with the nose, firm tannins present but cloaked by the forward fruit. Youthful, accessible, it will benefit from further ageing.
Maratheftiko should be treated like Cabernet Sauvignon, served at 18degr C with the finer cuts of lamb, beef, venison and of course duck, pasta with meat sauce and strong cheese.