Food & Drink Information
Many people don’t realize it, but there is a difference between sparkling wine and real champagne. Champagne is only champagne if it comes from a certain area of France and it actually says “Champagne” on the label.
Beside the fact that Champagne is only made in France, there are other strict guidelines to how Champagne is made.
Unlike most wines, champagne goes through a secondary fermentation process which is done in the bottle. That’s what causes natural carbon dioxide gas to get caught inside. This trapped co2 is what causes the bubbles.
Sparkling wines do not go through a secondary fermentation process. Sparkling wine is made from regular wine with co2 injections. This is done the same way as when they make coke or any other type of soda.
But does sparkling wine taste the same as champagne? The answer to this is that they may taste close, but the real difference can be told with a taste test. Champagne is bubblier and a bit lighter and sparkling wines will always carry a taste from the region they are from. Most people tend to prefer the real champagne.
The best way to chill champagne is not in the freezer, but rather in the refrigerator for not more than a couple of days. Better yet, 30 minutes before you are ready to drink the champagne, put it in a champagne cooler that is filled with equal parts ice and water and chill.
When you are ready to open the bottle, make sure that it is always pointed away from yourself and anyone else. To be on the safe side, keep your thumb on top of the cork and with your other hand separate the wire from the bottle. Hold the cork and top part of the bottle firmly in your hand while holding the bottom of the bottle with your other hand. Slowly turn the bottom of the bottle. You do not want the cork to pop, but in case it does and champagne comes pouring out of the bottle do not turn the bottle upright, but rather at an angle which will stop the flow of champagne.
So how do you know what to look for when choosing your champagne? Assess the bubbles. How many are there, how big are they and how fine are the beads? A young champagne will have lots of bubbles where as an older champagne will have less bubbles. Vintage champagne is any champagne that has a date on the label. It means all the grapes were picked in that same year. Non vintage champagne is a mix of various years and a mix of different kinds of grapes.
Labels can tell you more than whether the champagne is a vintage or not. You can also tell how dry the champagne is. For example, “Brut” is the driest of champagnes with almost no residual sugars. Extra Brut, Brut, Extra Dry and Dry are the four different levels of dryness you can get. It can be misleading because by the time you get to “Dry” you are actually drinking champagne which is more on the sweet side.
What type of glass should you use to drink champagne from? It all depends on how many bubbles you want your champagne to have. Narrower glasses or flutes keep the bubbles in the best. If you were to pour champagne from a flute to a martini glass, you would see almost of all the bubbles disappear. But this does not mean your champagne has gone flat. Pour it back into the flute and the bubbles will come back.
Evelyn Whitaker writes articles for german-toasting-glasses.com German Toasting Glasses german-toasting-glasses.com german-toasting-glasses.com which specializes in custom engraved wedding gifts from Germany.
If you are looking for fine Italian wine and food, consider the Bascilicata region of southern Italy. You may find a bargain, and I hope that you’ll have fun on this fact-filled wine education tour.
Bascilicata is the instep of the Italian boot. This hilly and mountainous region is located in the southwest corner of Italy on the Ionian Sea. Parts of Bascilicata have been settled since the Stone Age. It was conquered by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Normans. When the pirates came, the local inhabitants were forced to flee into the interior. Historically the region is quite poor. Its population is slightly more than 600 thousand.
Agriculture products include barley, citrus fruit, corn, potatoes, oats, olives, and tomatoes. While meat is relatively scarce, more and more sheep, pigs, goats, and cattle are raised. There is some industry including a major FIAT (automobile) factory. Tourism is becoming more popular, in spite of, and perhaps in part because of a lack of infrastructure.
Bascilicata’s administrative center is Potenza, a city of about 70 thousand. It is known as the coldest city in Italy and sometimes has snow. The city of Matera has at least two reasons to be proud. In September, 1943 it was the first Italian city to rise up against the German occupation. And Matera contains a prehistoric settlement, caves that have been occupied by people for at least 9 thousand years. In some places, the streets are actually rooftops. Parts of this area are now classified as a World Heritage Site.
Bascilicata devotes about 60 thousand acres to grapevines, it ranks 17th among the 20 Italian regions. Its total annual wine production is less than 13 million gallons, also giving it a 17th place. About 73% of the wine production is red, leaving 27% for white. The region produces two DOC wines, Aglianico del Vulture, reviewed below, and Terre dell Alta Val d’Agri. DOC stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, which may be translated as Denomination of Controlled Origin, presumably a high-quality wine. Only 2.4% of Bascilicata wine carries the DOC designation. Bascilicata is home to about two dozen major and secondary grape varieties, half red and half white.
Widely grown international white grape varieties include Malvasia and Muscato. The best-known strictly Italian white variety is Malvasia Bianca di Basilicato. Virtually no Bascilicata white wine is exported to North America.
Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are international red grape varieties that compose the Terre dell Alta Val d’Agri DOC wine. The best-known Italian red variety is Aglianico, which may have actually originated in Greece.
Before we reviewing the Bascilicata wine and Italian cheese that we were lucky enough to purchase at a local wine store and a local Italian food store, here are a few suggestions of what to eat with indigenous wines when touring this beautiful region.
Start with Acgua e Sale, Soaked Bread with Sweet Onion, Tomato, and Basil. Then try Grano con Ragù de Maiale, Savory Pork Ragout.
For dessert indulge yourself with Grano Dolce, Plump Wheat with Pomegranate, Chocolate, and Nuts.
OUR WINE REVIEW POLICY While we have communicated with well over a thousand Italian wine producers and merchants to help prepare these articles, our policy is clear. All wines that we taste and review are purchased at the full retail price.
Wine Reviewed
Cantine di Palma DOC ‘Il Nibbio Grigio’ Aglianico Vulture 2000 13% alcohol about $14
Let’s start with the marketing materials. “Medium ruby in color with aromas of dried berries, leather, figs, dried flowers and spice. This medium-bodied wine has a rustic style, it’s quite assertive on the palate with some dusty tannins. It would be great with lamb chops or braised pork ribs and could reward 2-3 years further cellaring. (August 2005).”
This was a wine that I was rooting for, prior to opening the bottle. It is a hard life for many people in Bascilicata; perhaps that’s why the residents live longer than in most other Italian regions. But I didn’t have to cheat to like this wine. Interestingly enough, my supplier has dropped the price by $2 a bottle, which may be a first for the wines in this series. I might buy a half case and taste it over the years. And now to my review.
The first pairing was with meat balls and potatoes. The wine had a fine nose. It was quite full-bodied, and tasted of tobacco (I’m not a smoker) and cherries. While the wine was very pleasant it was shorter than I had hoped. It was quite enjoyable on its own.
My reactions were basically the same when tasting this wine with beef ribs, except that the wine was moderately long. It was easy to drink but not light.
Then I drank this wine with a grilled rib steak in my spicy, homemade barbeque sauce that included ketchup, Dijon-style mustard, horseradish, fresh garlic, and black pepper. The accompaniments included potatoes cooked in chicken fat (a specialty of a local supermarket) and a tomato and red pepper salsa. The wine was really excellent. It held up well and tasted of dark fruit and tobacco.
I didn’t have any Bascilicata cheese so I had to settle for two other Italian cheeses. Isola is a Sicilian fresh cheese made from sheep’s milk. The Isola cheese was powerful, strong smelling and strong tasting, especially when you crunched into a peppercorn. Even though it was getting a bit long in the tooth, the cheese intensified the Aglicano’s fruitiness. Montasio is a cooked, full-fat, semi-hard cheese made from cow’s milk and aged for several months. It has a pungent smell and a strong, pasty taste. It comes from the Friuli-Venezia Giuli of northeastern Italy. This time the wine and cheese pairing was not as successful, but the combination was still satisfying.
Before giving my verdict, which I believe you can guess, I do have one final comment. In spite of what I have read, this wine is not very tannic. I would not recommend keeping it until 2020, or even 2015, as some others suggest. But I do recommend buying it now, and even storing it for a few years.
Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten books on computers and the Internet, but to be honest, he would rather just drink fine French or other wine, accompanied by the right foods. He teaches classes in computers at an Ontario French-language community college. Presently his wine websites are theworldwidewine.com theworldwidewine.com and theitalianwineconnection.com theitalianwineconnection.com
Ingredients:
1 lb celery hearts
1 small red onion
1 small potato
4 cups chicken stock
2 Tbsp cold-pressed olive oil
2 bay leafs
Method:
Peel and chop onion and potato. Sautee with olive oil in a 3-quart saucepan until tender. Add chicken stock and bring to boil. Chop celery and add to saucepan along with bay leafs. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove bay leafs from soup. With a soup ladle put about half of the mixture in the blender. Hold the lid on securely while pureeing for one minute. Repeat with the other half of the mixture. Stir all the soup together well.
Makes 4-6 servings
The main ingredient in this recipe, celery is truly a Super food because of all its health benefits. According to Hippocrates celery is known to calm the nerves. Celery also aids the kidneys by helping reduce it of wastes. Another health benefit of celery is that it is an anti-rheumatic. It reduces inflammation by clearing uric acid from painful joints.
The secret ingredient that magically gives this soup a creamy texture without using cream is the humble potato. Heart healthy olive oil is the magic ingredient that is used in the place of butter.
It’s one of the healthiest and best tasting soups I’ve ever had. With this recipe I can have my cream of celery soup and keep healthy too and now so can you!
To print out a free copy of a delicious, low fat spinach salad recipe go to cookingmagic.blogspot.com cookingmagic.blogspot.com and click on the Low Fat Spinach Salad link on the right hand side of the page.
Most people enjoy eating out when it comes time to eat. Not only is it easier than eating at home, the food always seems to taste better than what can be home cooked. Now this isn’t to say anything against home cooking. I happen to enjoy a home cooked meal just as much as any other, but sometimes it is just nice to go out to eat and enjoy the great recipes that are available at my favorite restaurant. Sometimes, however it isn’t always convenient or financially sound to eat out as much as you would like. Getting in the habit of eating at home is a difficult thing, but this can be made a little easier by learning how to cook your favorite restaurant recipes at home.
Finding authentic copycat secret restaurant recipes is not always as easy as it would seem. Sometimes you can find the restaurant recipes on the Internet right on the website of the restaurant itself. Other times you will find different websites offering the copycat recipes for free. The problem with these recipes is that they are not always spot on with the real restaurant recipes. That is why finding the copycat recipes that are actually authentic is so important if you are going to cook them at home.
So it doesn’t matter if you love the food from Applebee’s or KFCs. Or if you crave an I-hop pancake stack or a steak from the outback, finding the real authentic and secret restaurant recipes is the only way that you will be able to satisfy the craving without spending all the money to actually go out to eat.
Make your own mouth watering recipes from your favorite restaurants at home. Visit us know for a special report on copycat recipes topsecret-recipes.info/ topsecret-recipes.info/
Download your own copy of the topsecret-recipes.info/ Copy Cat Cookbook
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