Tag Archives: Champagne

Not so fast, Miller High Life

Monty Python as twits
“Where’s that Champagne of Beers? It has to be around here some where.”

The Champagne of Beers isn’t welcome in Europe

The Wine Curmudgeon was in a top level meeting the other evening when a colleague took a sip of his beer and asked: “Do they still call Miller High Life ‘the Champagne of Beers?’ ”

I took a sip of mine and pondered. “I can’t imagine they do,” I said. “There are all sorts of European Union regulations to prevent just that sort of thing. I’ve written about it on the blog many times. Haven’t you subscribed?”

My colleague said he had heard something about that, so we moved on to other topics. This included the future of our meeting site, given that Dallas real estate developers have been going crazy closing long-time businesses because they don’t have nearly enough money. Highest and best use, baby!

So imagine my surprise when I saw this headline the next day: “Miller High Life has fallen afoul of strict European laws on ‘champagne.‘ ”

Turns out my colleague had been right to ask.

Reported CBS: “Customs officers in Belgium seized a shipment of 2,352 cans of the beer in February, after it landed in the Belgian port of Antwerp, on its way to Germany. Officials seized the cans ‘because they used the protected designation of origin “Champagne,” and this goes against European regulations,’ said a Belgian customs official.” The Champagne trade group, long known to blog readers for its fanatical devotion to intellectual property, asked that the shipment be seized and destroyed.

Miller High Life, owned by Molson Coors, isn’t sold in the European Union, likely for just this reason. Hence, the shipment to Germany was probably illegal to begin with, even before the Champagne business. It’s also worth wondering why anyone in Germany – home to some of the world’s greatest beer – would want Miller High Life. It’s perfectly acceptable for a weeknight business meeting, but for serious beer drinkers? Hard to believe.

Finally, a note to CBS: The word champagne in the headline should have been capitalized. It’s a proper noun, referring to the Champagne region in France. For your sake, I hope the Champagne trade group didn’t notice that. Otherwise, you’ll get a nasty cease and desist letter.

Holiday wine gift guide 2022

wine racks at a storeThe Wine Curmudgeon’s holiday wine gift guide 2022 — value, value, and more value

Once again this year, the WC received the same sort of news releases for holiday season wine gifts — lots of overpriced items that hardly anyone actually needs. That means you, Yeti wine cooler.  Plus, and as always, lots and lots of plus for the Coravin opener, which begs the question: How many Coravins does one person have to have?

Which doesn’t those of us much good who want quality and value, as well as a gift we will enjoy. Which brings us to the blog’s 2022 holiday wine gift guide. As always, keep the blog’s wine gift buying guidelines in mind:

• Give the gift of the blog, and save the WC from all that Substack subscription advice.  One year of the newsletter at 20 percent off, just $56. Click this link to send a gift subscription. Use the email address of the person getting the subscription where it asks for an email, add a credit card, and they’ll get the $10 Hall of Fame, the Cheap Wine of the Year, and all of the rest — plus the rants and analysis that have made the blog what it is.

• Windows on the World, 35th edition ($21): There are probably a trillion wine books, including mine (which is almost out of print). But the Zraly is almost certainly the best overall look at wine and how to make sense of it. I own a couple of editions, and it has been the textbook for most of the college wine classes I have taught. And if it seems like I recommend it regularly, that’s because it’s that good.

• The Language of Yes Syrah 2020 ($40, sample, 13.9%) is a collaboration between Randall Grahm, who is about as iconoclast as wine gets, and E&J Gallo, which isn’t. Ever. In any way. Hence, it’s an interesting and well-made wine that doesn’t taste particularly a Randall Grahm wine, and especially a syrah. Remember this? Instead, it’s less meaty, but fruitier (black fruits) and more rich. And, because it is what it is, it has received high praise from the Winestream Media. That’s something that doesn’t always happen with Grahm wines.

• Yes, wine glasses seem sort of cliched — until yours break and you need new ones And then they’re expensive and confusing.  But a company called made-in has quality glasses — four red and four white for $69.

Photo:”More Wine Racks” by Didriks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

More holiday wine gift guides:
• Holiday wine gift guide 2021
• Holiday wine gift guide 2020
• Holiday wine gift guide 2019

Holiday wine gift guide 2021

holiday gifts
“That metal foil cutter looks super cool.”

The Wine Curmudgeon’s holiday wine gift guide 2021 — which, of course, includes things that aren’t wine

Do a Google search for wine gifts, and they tend to repeat each other — as if one gift guide borrowed from another gift guide which borrowed from another gift guide. Consider this waterproof Bluetooth glass holder so you can listen to tunes and drink wine while in the shower. It showed up in so many gift roundups that it’s sold out.

Which, of course, we don’t do here. Hence, the blog’s 2021 holiday wine gift guide, which includes things that aren’t wine. And, as always, keep the blog’s wine gift buying guidelines in mind:

• Steven Spurrier: A Life in Wine ($45): Spurrier, who died this year, could have been the most important wine writer in those ancient, pre-Parker days. If he had not held the Judgment of Paris, who knows how long it would have taken California wine to take its place in the world? But Spurrier was much more than a wine writer; he was also an important wine educator and leading wine merchant who owned a wine shop in Paris  — hardly something most Britons would do.

• Smith-Madrone’s riesling ($35, sample, 12.9%) is a wine that reminds me just how amazing wine can be. For one thing, California doesn’t do much riesling, and it certainly doesn’t do much well. But this one is a revelation, combining California-style fruitiness with the varietal characteristics that make great riesling so much fun to drink. That means lime zest, a bit of tingliness in the back, a hint of petrol, some sweetness floating around to remind you it’s riesling, just enough acidity to greet the sweetness, and stoniness in the finish.

• Regular visitors know that the Wine Curmudgeon is not much for wine gadgets; he’d rather buy wine. Still, there’s something about this metal foil cutter ($25) that strikes me as worthwhile. Too many bottles still have foil caps and too many of those refuse to come off with a twist. And, frankly, using a waiter’s corkscrew to remove the foil leads to cursing and cut fingers. So why not a foil cutter?

• Laherte Freres Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature ($50, purchased, 12.5%) is an amazing bubbly, everything that Champagne – the sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France – should be, and especially for those of us who prefer a cleaner, more minerally style.  One estimate gives it another 20 years in the bottle, and I wouldn’t argue with that at all.

And, finally — shameless plug alert! — give the blog as a gift: One year of the newsletter at 20 percent off, just $56. Click this link to send a gift subscription. Use the email address of the person you’re giving the subscription to where it asks for an email, add a credit card, and they’ll get the $10 Hall of Fame, the Cheap Wine of the Year, and all of the rest — plus the rants and analysis that have made the blog what it is.

More holiday wine gift guides:
• Holiday wine gift guide 2020
• Holiday wine gift guide 2019
• Holiday wine gift guide 2018

Winebits 712: Parsing the Gallup drinking survey

men drinking
“Wine? Why would we waste our time drinking that?”

This week’s wine news: Delving into the details of Gallup’s 2021 drinking survey, since there’s more to the study than the fact we’re not falling down drunk

• Where are the young people? The Gallup poll confirmed what we’ve seen elsewhere — younger consumers are turning away from wine. Just 22 percent of those 18 to 34 say wine is their drink of choice, and only 28 percent of those 35 to 54 picked wine over been and spirits. That the second group’s number is so low, given that it’s mostly Gen X, speaks to the size of wine’s generation gap.

• Where are the men? This bit was stunning — only 15 percent of men said wine was their preferred beverage. In fact, more men preferred beer (54 percent) and spirits (28 percent). The 15 percent flies in the face of most of wine’s marketing, elitism, and $100 labels. There’s always been a sense women bought more wine, but that men were more discriminating wine buyers, spent more money, and were better worth pursuing. So good luck reaching that 15 percent.

• Thank you, premiumization: The Wine Curmudgeon has ranted long and often about the evils of premiumization, and here’s one more statistic that bears that out. In 2005, Gallup reported that 39 percent of us preferred wine to beer, about the only time in the past 30 years wine has been more popular. Fast forward to 2021, after more than a decade of premiumization, and beer is back on top at 39 percent, and wine is barely holding off spirits, 31-27.

Photo: Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash

Winebits 711: Anti-trust, Champagne crisis, wine investments

Champagne
“If there isn’t enough Champagne, does that mean we have to drink domestic?”

This week’s wine news: Biden Administration is looking at the alcohol business, plus rich people facing Champagne crisis and wine as the next great investment

• Wine and anti-trust: Consolidation has made the wine business top heavy in production and wholesaling, with a handful of companies controlling a majority of the business. The Biden Administration, as part of its new anti-trust initiative, is going to look at a couple of proposed mergers on the delivery side. The Federal Trade Commission says it will investigate Uber’s proposed acquisition of booze delivery service Drizly, as well as Uber’s “partnership” with grocery delivery service Gopuff (which also owns the BevMo retail liquor chain). Says one news report: “The FTC is concerned that the deal ‘could hamper competition in online sale and delivery of alcohol and convenience-store items.’ ”

• The rich are different: The Wine Curmudgeon never passes up an opportunity to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald. So be aware that there is a Champagne crisis in New York’s the Hamptons, where really rich people (“They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are. …”) are having difficulty getting enough Champagne. Something about a pandemic, apparently, reports the New York Post. “The shortage is so bad that one … billionaire customer plans to fly 15 cases of premium Champagne on his private plane from France for his wife’s annual Hamptons birthday party.” How can the republic ever survive?

• If you’re tired of crypto: Wine could be your next great investment, writes Kevin Vandenboss on the Benzinga website. “One alternative investment with little correlation to the stock market and strong historical returns has been fine wine. Investors with connections to the top wineries around the world and access to the exclusive wine marketplaces have realized extraordinary long-term gains on the bottles that wine enthusiasts are eager to get their hands on.” Golly! Does that mean I can make enough money to fly in 15 cases of Champagne?

Expensive wine 147: Laherte Freres Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature NV

Laherte Frères Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature
Laherte Frères Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature/$46-$60

The Laherte Freres offers tremendous value for Champagne

Several months ago, The Big Guy called and said, “We have many reasons to celebrate. I’ll bring the Champagne.”

Which turned out to be the Laherte Freres Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature ($50, purchased, 12.5%) – and which turned out to be a reason to celebrate all by itself. Given that even mediocre Champagne can cost this much, the Laherte Frères is an especial value,

It’s everything that Champagne – the sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France – should be, and especially for those of us who prefer a cleaner, more minerally style. One set of tasting notes calls the aroma “crushed chalk,” which seems to be a bit of stretch. Still, it makes the point about how mineral-driven the wine is.

The Lahere Freres is made entirely of chardonnay, so expect sort of lemon and green apple fruit, with the tight bubbles and almost creamy foam that’s the mark of quality sparkling wine. There isn’t much yeastiness, and it’s more dry than most sparkling wine (the Brut Nature vs. Brut designation). In this, the wine is incredibly complex and structured, and very young. One estimate gives it another 20 years in the bottle, and I wouldn’t argue with that at all.

Highly recommended, whether you’re celebrating an August birthday or want something for later in the year.

Imported by Victory Wine Group

Expensive wine 141: Besserat de Bellefon Blanc de Blanc Grand Cru Brut NV

Besserat de BellefonYes, it’s pricey, but the Besserat de Bellefon is Champagne the way it should be

The Champagne business is suffering during the pandemic. A couple of weeks ago, it reported that sales fell by some $1.2 billion in 2020, dropping 18 percent in volume. Who would have thought?

Hence, the Besserat de Bellefon Blanc de Blanc Grand Cru ($90, sample, 12.5%) – and just in time for The Holiday that Must Not be Named.

The Besserat’s price is purely a function of premiumization; Champagne has managed to avoid the Trump wine tariffs. The region’s sales decline is a function of this surge in prices, as well as the pandemic’s hit on restaurant wine sales. Not many of us want to spend this much money on a bottle of Champagne for dinner at home.

The Besserat’s quality has nothing to do with premiumization. This is top-notch sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France, offering everything one would expect of a high-priced bubbly. Look for some citrus and floral notes mixed with the almost toast-like aroma that high-end Champagne is known for. The fruit is a little softer than chardonnay; thank red apple and stone fruits. The bubbles, of course, are quite tight..

It’s not often I get to taste a wine that costs this much, but the Besserat de Bellefon was worth waiting for.

Imported by Winesellers Ltd.