Debate a Bubble - Champagne News and Reviews

Champagne Dinners Part 2

In my last blog I'd just got to the point of telling you the golden rules of food and champagne matching, so here they are

The golden rules of food and champagne (wine) matching

I always feel that there are 4 golden rules.
3 of them are useful to bear in mind, but like any rules, are there to be broken if you don’t agree with them. However there’s no getting around the first one.

Rule No. 1 – get things the right way round
Many people make the mistake of first deciding what they want to cook and then looking for a wine to match. You should really work the other way round; start with the wine, THEN match the food to the wine. The reason is simply that the wine is a given; it’s made; it’s already in the bottle and you can’t alter it. On the other hand the preparation of the food is entirely in your hands and you can alter it in umpteen ways with different seasoning, different herbs, different sauces and different ways of cooking.

So taste the wine/champagne beforehand, or buy a wine that you are already familiar with, make a few mental, or written, notes about the wine and start from there.

Champagne Dinners

Earlier this month I hosted a champagne dinner at the head office of a bank in Manchester. It was a great evening and I thought it would be fun to share a few details with you. There is quite a lot to tell you so I’ll spread it over several blogs.

The prospect of serving champagne throughout a meal with each course being matched to a different champagne may strike some of you as either far too expensive, or perhaps you think that there’s not sufficient variety in champagne to cover an entire meal of different courses, so let me try to put these doubts to rest.

A cool idea

Champagne is all about fun and on most informal occasions standing on ceremony and insisting on the finer points of etiquette or the correct ways of serving champagne can be a bit tedious. It's very much in this spirit that you have to accept the latest fashion in champagne drinking that is being promoted by Piper Heidsieck - not one of my favourite brands, but that's just my opinion - and in any case, the idea will work just as well with any champagne.

The idea is to make champagne ice cubes and put them in your champagne glass before pouring the champagne over the ice cubes. PH are even supplying some bars with special coupe-type glasses to promote the concept, but in actual fact you can use whatever glasses you normally use for champagne.

You can try this at home if you wish by just making ice cubes using champagne, popping the ice cubes in the glass and then pouring in your preferred champagne.

Like any fashion it will be interesting to see how long this one lasts, but if it makes you smile, then give it a go, but do remember that the even champagne ice cubes won't make the champagne taste any different and the best way to cool a bottle of champagne remains the traditonal one of putting it in an ice bucket filled half with ordinary ice cubes and half with water, then leaving it for 20 minutes or so. Alternatively just keep a bottle to hand in the fridge. You can keep a bottle of champagne in the fridge for weeks with no ill effects and you'll be sure to have something cool and tempting to anjoy at the drop of a hat.