THE STORY OF CHAMPAGNE

Champagne has been around from the 5th century AD.  While the beverage was first produced in France, the Romans might have had more to do with the origination.  For the record, French Benedictine monk Dom Perignon did not invent this drink.  For one, he lived in the period around 1700.

Most countries have now pretty much accepted French pressures that only those sparkling wines produced in the Champagne region of the country, east of Paris, and north of Burgandy, can be called champagne, although there are exceptions here and there.  In Spain, this general bubbly wine is called cava, in Italy it is spumante if made from the Muscat grape and prosecco if from the Glera grape.  In Russia it is called shampanskoye, which means champagne.  

The French primarily use Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier.  Traditionally, there is an initial fermentation, followed by a second, with a freezing process for removing the sediments.  You cannot find real champagne less than three years old, and the quality is carefully maintained.  The bottle of Dom Perignon I just purchased was dated 2003.  There are more than a hundred champagne houses.  The prestige champagnes are Louis Roederer's Cristal, Laurent-Perrier's Grand Siecle, Moet and Chandon's Dom Perignon, Pol Roger's Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill and Taittinger's Comtes de Champagne.  There is pink champagne, influenced by the Pinot Noir grape.  From USA Today, Americans are getting into the spirit:

My initial experience with champagne was in college more than half a century ago when really cheap California sparkling wines could be called champagne.  They generally were sweet and easy drinking.  I recall  my freshman roomy and still good friend, Jim Seger, setting an imibibition record of 16 glasses at a party in San Jose.  We all woke up in Toyon Hall the following morning and thought we had died, as our Stanford campus was blanketed with several inches of snow.  Using wheelbarrows (how we found shovels and a wheelbarrow is a story for another time), we made snowmen in rooms of "friends."  I guess we did not lock our doors in those days.

As  a matter of fact, I still prefer California sparkling wines to the fermented smell or musky odor of the expensive French versions.  Interestingly enough, I invested in one of my friend's, Phil Bossert's, wine importation company some years ago where one product was a RED sparkling wine made from Pinot Noir.  It could not be called champagne because the processing occurred in Germany.  That is my ultimate:  a heavy bodied, Bourdeaux-type wine with bubbles.  Can you imagine the market for this elixir in China?  I await the day when I can watch my Hawaiian sunset over a flute of this bubbly, smoking a Churchill cigar that smells like pipe tobacco, sipping a cup of coffee that tastes like coffee.  None of this exists today.

I once thought more expensive sparkling wines had smaller bubbles.  Well, it turns out this is actually true!  Also, remember that story about being able to get drunker faster with champagne than wine?  Amazingly enough, this is also true.  Then, of course, that tale about the traditional champagne glass moulded from the left (close to her hear) breast of Marie Antoinette?  Also true.  However, while we did suck up this potion from these types of glasses (as in that San Jose misadventure) a half century ago, everyone now uses those long, tall, thin flutes.  I have a series of these Riedel glasses starting with the Year 2000 (right) to the present.

The alcohol content of most sparkling wines is in the range of 10-13% by volume.  14% and the bottle pays higher taxes in some locales.  The standard pour should be five ounces.  Conveniently, the medical profession says ten ounces per day of wine is ideal, which is the equivalent of two bottles of beer and two 1.5 ounce shots of scotch.  The world is not fair. This only applies to males.  For women, divide by two.  The why is too complicated to attempt here.

You can keep good champagne for a very long time.  A bottle of 1825 Perrier-Jouet (right) stored at 52 F was recently opened and tasted okay.  Two bottles are left.

Thus, everything you thought about champagnes might well have been wrong.  Now, do it right!

To prepare a bottle, don't place it in a freezer.  You are encouraged to chill it in salt saturated icy water to lower the temperature as much as possible.  Then, using a towel around the bottle, carefully (people have lost their eye), ease off that wire cage and foil (this is the tricky part because you need two hands), making sure that this lethal weapon is pointed in a safe direction, for this bullet can fly off at 50 miles per hour for 50 feet.  Grab the cork with one hand and turn the bottle (yes, turn the bottle, which is cold and slippery--so keep using the towel) with the other.  Have a glass handy to pour, just in case the bubbly was not cold enough.

There are two more techniques..  Go down to your cool cellar, grab a real saber, then swiftly chop off the top close to the cork.  In planning for his company, Phil Bossert and I were treated to this ceremony in Luxembourg at a foie gras restaurant which had its own goose farm.  I did wonder, though, about shards of glass.  However, this is a time tested method, and it is wiser not to have the champagne too cold, for you want to lose that initial surge to remove those pieces.  There is a less exciting way by using the back of a butcher knife.

Of course, there are numerous health benefits.  Your brain can better cope from a stroke, and there are hints that Alzlheimer's and Parkinson's patients can be helped.  I don't want to be a ninny on this, but my posting on diacetyl suggested that any white wine actually might induce Alzheimer's and dementia.  Maybe bubbles make that crucial difference.  More evidence from Reading University, where polyphenol antioxidants in champagne, as in red wine and chocolates, reduced the effects of free radicals.  Also, sparkling wine strengthens the walls of your blood vessels.  Plus:  lowers blood pressure and boosts your mood.

The best Sunday brunch is served at the W Hotel in Walker Hill, Seoul.  They feature Veuve Clicquot.

Drink all you want, for that is the only way you can feel like your bill is justified.  Sort of reminds me of flying First Class.  I carry an attitude that every drink I don't drink is money wasted.

My uncle Paul consumes half a bottle of champagne every day.  He is nearing 95.  Well, anyway, that bottle of Andre above is in his honor.  Usually, champagne is drunk on special occasions, such as my golden anniversary less than a week ago.  Ships are christened and racing car winners are so sprayed.  I think those victorious female golfers are spattered with club soda, but that one to the left at the recent U.S. Women's Open certainly looks like champagne.  Anyway, tomorrow, New Year's Eve, is the biggest night for champagne.  

TOMORROW:  my annual grand summary--The Shape of Things to Come by the Year 2020.

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Tropical Cyclone Freda is now up to 120 MPH, and is projected to affect New Caledonia:



However, while Freda is expected to weaken, the eye will steamroll along the western coastline of the main island.

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GAWA Day #37B: Frankfurt

I was somewhat surprised to see all that snow on mountains just outside of Venice on the way to Frankfurt, as this is still October:

The approach to Frankfurt Airport showed that the fall colors were already here:

The Sheraton at the airport now seems spiffier, I went up to the Club Lounge for a drink and ended up deciding to have my dinner here:

If I paid $75 for salad, soup and beer at the Westin in Venice, this meal above would have cost $150 there.  Here, free. That bottom right drink is a red champagne, evocative of a time two decades ago when I was one of the investors for Phil Bossert's wine company, and accompanied him to Freiborg, when we drank 50 wines in two days, one a red champagne.  I thought that would be a big seller in China.

Frankfurt is the fifth largest city in Germany with a little more than 700,000 people, but its metropolitan region has 5.5 million.  The geographic center of the European Union is maybe 20 miles east of where I presently am.

The city is the largest financial center in Continental Europe.  The Frankfurt Stock Exchange is one of the world's largest by market capitalization.

This is Hub City, for all major air, rail and highway links virtually pass through my hotel room.  Lufthansa is headquartered here.

The largest book fair on Planet Earth just ended here.  7,000 exhibitors and 286,000 visitors.

In September, Frankfurt hosted the world's largest motor show.  They share this venue every other year with Hannover.  Anyway, you get an idea what Frankfurt does.

So to summarize, Mercer ranked Frankfurt as #7 in its Quality of Living survey.  #1 has been Vienna since 2010, while San Francisco is the highest ranked U.S. city at #27, with Boston at #34 and Honolulu #36

There are no Michelin 3-Star nor Pellegrino Best 50 restaurants in Frankfurt, so I decided to go up to the Main Tower Restaurant.  However, they were booked for the next two days.  After a couple more checks, I decided, heck, I haven't had a good steak in weeks, so I asked for, and got a lunch reservation at M-Steakhouse, said to be the best in Frankfurt.  Not sure why this bird is at the entrance.

I had a one pound rib-eye from the USA and glasses of California Cabernet and German beer:

These are what came at the end.

The walk to Palmengarten took less than ten minutes.  I kind of got lost and ended up on the wrong side of the park, but saw a coffee shop, so I walked in and noticed the park was right there when you walk out.  I think I committed a sin by not paying the 7 Euro fee, but there was nowhere to do this.  Interestingly enough, a few minutes into the park I saw something on the ground, which was the entrance card noting the 7 Euro fee..  Must be the will of God.

So here are a few photos:

Dahlias were in bloom:

The rest of the park:

The obligatory swan:

Then, on the way back to the airport I walked around the Zeil, which was not anything special:

This was my most relaxing day of the journey.

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The so-called strongest hurricane in the history the Western Hemisphere, made landfall between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta:

Scarily, Patricia took only a day and a half to strengthen from a tropical storm to a Category 5.  Unofficially, Typhoon Nancy in the East Pacific reached a 1-minute maximum sustained wind speed of 215 MPH.  Patricia hit 200 MPH.  Iniki in 1992 was a Category 4 at 145 MPH when making landfall on Kauai.

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SEABOURN ODYSSEY: Two Weeks into a 53-day Cruise

Today represents two weeks on the Seabourn Odyssey.  

• The itinerary was, well, kind of junk.  For those 13 days, a Sydney to Hobart to Perth to Adelaide to Melbourne to Sydney trip would have been far better.

• 
  The management seems somewhat disorganized.  Maybe it's the "just out of pandemic process" matter that is causing most of this.  Whatever, let me tell you one incident that should have been better managed.
• Yesterday morning we got this sudden letter indicating that all passengers needed to bring their passport and guest pass to meet with immigration officials off the ship.
• I called and was told to go now, which was around 10AM.  We had not yet had breakfast, but went as told.
• There is this transition zone between the ship and customs.  Left the ship, but at the entrance to Australia, a guard said that we also needed a transit card.  Went back to the ship, and they had a pile of cards in no particular order.  Somehow they found our cards, which meant they had to go through this process for every person on the ship.
• Armed now with the Passport, Guest Pass and and Transit Card, we left the ship.  When we got to the other side, we were told that the Immigration Officials would not be available for another hour and probably more.
• Okay, big deal, so we can then go back to the ship to eat something.  Nope.  Once off, you can't get back on until you officially go through the immigration process.
• So what?  I'm hungry and my blood pressure is going up.  Well we went for a walk into Sydney,  maybe to eat something, plus I wanted to get an item from the Apple Store, and sort of knew where that was located, and perhaps pick up a bottle of a heavy-bodied Sparkling Shiraz we heard so much about.
• We returned around 11:40AM and passed through the immigration process.
• Not yet lunch, and my pedometer read 7172, which, if you've been keeping up, is spectacular.  I've been averaging only around 3500 steps/day.
• Went to a fine lunch.
• 
  The best part of all, some head something or another called and said sorry for all this humbug, and for their mistake would delete our special $195/person wine dinner bill we had for our troubles.  Maybe it was the high blood pressure issue that caught their attention.

• 
  There was a second matter that bugged me.  
• Anyone who has boarded a cruise ship know that they need to go through a muster session for safety purposes,  Life jackets and all that, except they have simplified things and no mass gathering on deck on this ship.  Meaning nothing like the scene to the right.
• Well, we went through this minimal process two weeks ago, but had to do this again.
• So I grumbled, for we will need to again go through this effort when we get to Fiji, and anywhere else when a lot people leave and others board.
• The reason why is that people forget where they should go in an emergency, and the cruise just wanted to remind us of a few things.  Old people forget, something they did not say, but no doubt have in mind.

That aside, and those above issues are really picayune, the cruise has been spectacular.  The best we have been on in our life.  The Happiness 1 condition I'm in continues.  All those above incidents didn't dent my state of near euphoria.  The food is mostly excellent, the drinks copious...and they haven't yet run out of Glenmorangie or anything else.

I left you yesterday truly upset because we could not return to the ship through corporate mismanagement.  Thankfully, the ship was berthed at the Overseas Passenger Terminal, only a ten minute walk to our previous Marriott hotel.  So we walked into Sydney all the way to the Apple Store for me to purchase an earphone for my iPhone.  Then we also picked up a bottle of fabulous Sparkling Shiraz.

So here are just a few reason why this cruise is so great.  Lunch was a special pleasure because we were so hungry, not a normal condition on this cruise.  All that walking led to a pedometer reading of 7172  BEFORE lunch.

The roast pork had a special umaminess that was at a maximum.  A close second was the short ribs we had last night.

Then, the one best experience we both have ever had on a cruise.  We ordered room service for two double orders of caviar, plus some salmon, which we had with chilled Belvedere Vodka and that extraordinary Sparkling Shiraz we had just bought earlier in the day.  To begin, our view from our veranda of the Sydney Opera House to watch the departure of the Odyssey.

I've been searching for a heavy-bodied red champagne, and this is even better than the one Phil Bossert and I tasted in Germany for our wine-importing company.  He ran the effort and I was a minor sponsor.

You would have thought that we would be totally satiated and ended the day on our veranda.  Instead, we went to The Patio for dinner, and a final theater show.

What a day....what a cruise.  Furthermore, walked 8580 steps yesterday.  Next, Moreton Island.

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