Got home this evening and pleased my own self by MacGyvering a very tasty sweet Italian sausage and egg sandwich dinner. Steamed the sausage, browned them, split them down the middle and browned the cut side after deglazing the pan with white wine and stock…placed them atop rustic bread that I smeared with a mixture of cream cheese and crushed garlic. On top of that I placed a fluffy mound of my double boiler scrambled eggs…just barely set, buttery, delicate. For something made up of what we had, it was pretty damn good but it did little to shake the irritation that I was feeling, the ever familiar, “chafe” from having my undies twisted all day. The thing that set me off this time? Randy handing me something he had printed out, “thought you might enjoy this” he said with that, “Oh this is gonna get her going” grin of his. I looked down at the freshly printed pile, (and yes, I mean pile as in pile of crap) and saw yet another, “Recommended Champagnes” list from one of the national wine publications….Dammit!
I sat there, my eyes glazing over at yet one more boring ass list of boring ass Champagne… “Why the hell do they even bother?!” rattling around in my beginning to boil brain. The wines were grouped into three categories; Light-bodied, Medium-bodied and Full-bodied…yeah, well I can tell you, there was no junk in any of those trunks. I looked up at Randy and said, “Now this, this shit just pisses me off” which I know is why he gave it to me in the first place, and we had the same conversation we have had a countless times, the, “What the hell good does this do?!” talk.
It goes like this:
Me—Jesus, this list is so freaking boring. There is nothing on here I would even consider buying let alone drink, (tad dramatic, some of them are in my, “meh it’s okay” pile).
Him—Well, they write for a national publication so they need to write up wines that are available everywhere.
Me—So what good comes from that?!
Okay so they write up the same boring crap over and over again, the wines made in such gargantuan quantities that they can be found in every Vons from Riverside to Duluth….so why not just call it the, “Best of the Shit You Can Get” list? It is absolutely no wonder to me why people don’t drink more Champagne when I read this kind of crap, why would they? Those wines inspire nothing more than a nose tingling burp. Clicquot yellow label….really? If I bought Clicquot, (um in the Full-bodied category by the way…gotta call bullshit on that) because some publication told me it was one of the best, then tasted it, dude…I might never have fallen in love with Champagne. Is it horrible, not really but it is pretty snooze worthy and man do they suffer with massive bottle variation, probably has something to do with the fact that those millions of cases are languishing in warehouses waiting for the masses to gobble them up…ugh!
So here’s a thought, how’s about writing up something like Pierre Peters, Agrapart, Jean Milan, H. Billiot…tell people how truly amazing those wines are, you know teach them something. Tell them how rare they are, how they will forever change the way people think about Champagne, urge them to seek them out, use the Internet if need be….like give praise where praise is due. I am so tired of these lists I could just scream, and when I read stories about distributers having to either dump these wines at the big box stores or even worse, having to send them back to France, rubbing their stink over the whole region…well that there, that just breaks my heart.
I just don’t see what’s wrong with writing up things that people may have to forage for, seek out, might just add a little more excitement when they actually procure a bottle of the stuff. It will also reward the stores that have done their research and homework, weeded through the merde to find the truly palate changing and have been fighting the, “Best of what you can get” attitudes, have been showing people how knee weakening a great bottle of Champagne can be. Oh and if enough people get pissed off that they cannot get their hands on the bottles that they are aching to try because of archaic shipping laws, well maybe they will join the fight to change them. Sounds like a bunch of wins to me but the thing that I long for most of all, to have people feel the weight, the texture, the length of a brilliant bottle of Champagne. The way the bubbles just barely dance across the palate…not stomp all over it, the balance between savory and fruity, the very noble, fucking sexy as hell, haunt that artisan Champagne can inspire.
Crushes me when I read lists like the one that was tossed in my lap today, makes me think of all the wines that will go underappreciated, undervalued and ignored because some publication is too damn lazy, afraid or uninformed to be willing to teach. Makes me think of all those people that sip on soulless wines and think they just don’t like Champagne. Even sadder, the people that will never experience the heart pounding want, desire and obsession that comes from a plate that has been touched, flirted with, kissed, seduced by a truly remarkable bottle of Champagne. That simply breaks my heart….and clearly gives me a massive wedgie.
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