Three things to ponder while sipping sparkling in the summer

A new way to close?

The wine business talks a lot about going green, but progress doesn’t always seem to keep up with the talk. That’s why I was so surprised to see this – a less expensive and much simpler wire cage. Obviously, it was on a cheap bottle; a $6 French charmat, in this case (which wasn’t too bad, either). We’ll never see it on a bottle of Champagne, but it did the job here. Much easier to take the cage off and the plastic cork was also easier to take out.

Of course, wine being wine, this may not have anything to do with the environment, and could just be a result of the supply chain shortages during the pandemic.

It’s also worth noting that sparkling “alternative” closures are quite rare. I got a sample several years ago of a cheap domestic sparkling with a screw cap, which worked reasonably well. But it made such an impressive on the industry that I don’t even remember what brand it was.

Looks like sparkling glasses are officially passe

One of my favorite posts to write is about Champagne glasses, whether it’s that we’re supposed to buy weird, expensive ones or that flute glasses are no better than old-fashioned coupes and that we should use a white wine glass.

Has the latter become more or less the rule? Perhaps, given this piece from Yahoo. It strikes me as the kind of thing non-wine people would write about wine because they’re told it’s true. I didn’t see any specific sparkling glasses listed; rather, a variety of white wine glasses were listed as OK for bubbly.

Regardless, I’m sticking with flutes, if only because I own a set. How is that for curmudgeonly?

Why is there so much flat sparkling wine?

I wrote about thiis several years ago and the problem seems to have reappeared. Ten or so of the last dozen bottles I’ve opened have been flat. And no, this isn’t just cheap stuff that comes with a weird-looking cage (that one wasn’t flat). It was expensive samples as well, including a $40 bottle of Champagne. The consensus among readers last time was that it was the crappy wine that I drink that was flat, but I think there’s a lot more going on this time.

Maybe a lot of bubbly is sitting on store and warehouse shelves, getting old and worn out. Maybe it’s some sort of leftover from the pandemic and the supply chain woes (bad corks?). Maybe it’s a retail storage problem. Hopefully, it’s nothing more than than just my bad luck.