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Wine Club Meeting:
Tuesday January 27, 2008
6:00
Bubblicious
Menu
Scallops au Curry
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Cream of Asparagus
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Roasted Quail au Foie Gras
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Plateau de Fromages
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Crème Brulée aux Pruneaux
$45 per person for a five course meal.
If you want to come and enjoy the dinner, but don't like
champagne, bring your own wine. Champagne & sparkling
wine will be shared
with those who bring a bottle.
Let us know if there are
any dietary concerns so we can make a subsitution.
The Origins of
Champagne
from Wikepedia.com
The Romans were the first to plant vineyards in this
area of northeast France with the region being
cultivated by at least the 5th century, possibly
earlier. Wines from the Champagne region were known
before medieval times. Churches owned vineyards and
monks produced wine for use in the sacrament of
Eucharist. French kings were traditionally anointed in
Reims and champagne wine was served as part of
coronation festivities. The Champenois were envious of
the reputation of the wines made from their Burgundian
neighbors to the south and sought to produces wines of
equal acclaim. However the northerly climate of the
region gave the Champenois a unique set of challenges in
making red wine. At the far extremes of sustainable
viticulture, the grapes would struggle to ripen fully
and often would have bracing levels of acidity and low
sugar levels.
The wines would be lighter bodied and more thin than the
Burgundy wines they were
seeking to out do.[2]
The English scientist and physician Christopher Merret
documented the addition of sugar to a finished wine to
create a second fermentation six years before Dom
Perignon set foot in the Abbey of Hautvillers and almost
40 years before it was claimed that the famed
Benedictine monk invented champagne. Contrary to legend
and popular belief, Dom Perignon did not invent
sparkling wine.[3][4] Merrett presented the Royal
Society with a paper in which he detailed what is now
called méthode champenoise in 1662.[5]
Although the French monk Dom Perignon (1638-1715) did
not invent champagne, it is true he developed many
advances in the production of this beverage, including
holding the cork in place with a wire collar to
withstand the fermentation pressure. In France, the
first sparkling champagne was created accidentally; its
pressure led it to be called "the devil's wine" (le vin
du diable) as bottles exploded or the cork jolted away.
Even when it was deliberately produced as a sparkling
wine, champagne was for a very long time made by the
méthode rurale, where the wine was bottled before the
only fermentation had finished. Champagne did not
utilize the méthode champenoise until the 19th century,
300 years after Christopher Merret documented the
process. The nineteenth century saw an explosive growth
in champagne production going from a regional production
of 300,000 bottles a year in 1800 to 20 million bottles
in 1850.[6]
In the 1800s champagne was noticeably sweeter than the
champagne of today, The trend towards drier champagne
began when Perrier-Jouët decided not to sweeten his 1846
vintage prior to exporting it to London. The designation
Brut champagne, the modern champagne, was created for
the British in 1876. [7]
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