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ABRAMS BOOKS - Cole Katherine Cole

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415 pages

English

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A vibrantly illustrated, authoritative guide to sparkling wine from James Beard Award winner Katherine Cole in the follow-up to her popular Rose All Day Sparkling Wine Anytime introduces readers to every style of sparkling wine, from Champagne and Prosecco to Cava, Lambrusco, Pet-Nat, and more. Wine expert Katherine Cole digs deep into sparkling wine's compelling history, role in culture today, and the unique process by which it is made, explicating the most complicated concepts with light, bubbly prose. Organized by region, this comprehensive guide includes producer profiles, tasting notes, cocktail recipes, food pairings, and bottle recommendations for any budget. Filled with playful illustrations and infographics, Sparkling Wine Anytime is an effervescent exploration of all things sparkling.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	09 mars 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781647001780
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	4 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0932€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION Life, Bubbly, and the Pursuit of Happiness
CHAPTER 1 Instructions for Achieving Effervescence
CHAPTER 2 Frothing Plot Points in History
CHAPTER 3 Champagne
CHAPTER 4 The Rest of France
CHAPTER 5 Italy
CHAPTER 6 Iberophone Nations
CHAPTER 7 Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East
CHAPTER 8 USA
CHAPTER 9 More Anglophone Nations
Glossary
Online Shopping Guide
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Photo Credit
Index of Searchable Terms
Listen up, all you film stars, porn stars, rock stars, and hip-hop stars, collapsing at the Chateau Marmont, lounging on yachts, and chanting lyrics like, Doses and mimosas, Champagne and cocaine. 1
Enough already.
Yes, we know the story of Marilyn Monroe bathing in a tub filled with three hundred and fifty bottles worth of Champagne. And we re aware that $400,000 worth of Perrier-Jou t flowed at the wedding of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. We have been alerted to the fact that Harrods department store in London sells jewel-encrusted bottles of Champagne for 115,000 each.
Enough.
Sparkling wine s greatest asset may be its image, but sparkling wine s biggest liability is . . . its image.
That image has been, until recently, one of danger and glamour, exclusivity and impossibility. It s time to give that old clich a rest.
As we prepared to send this book out to be printed, that clich was on its deathbed. The coronavirus outbreak had upended the economy, creating massive uncertainty overnight. As families lost jobs and loved ones, bottles of bubbs did not feel apropos for the moment. The mere notion of popping a pricey Champagne seemed absurd. As the author of a forthcoming tome on sparkling wine, I felt like a tone-deaf violinist, fiddling while Rome burned.
Months prior, of course, when I had been researching and writing this book, it had been an entirely different story. Bubbly wine was au courant. It was riding a wave of popularity, having enjoyed sales growth for more than a decade while demand for other styles remained more or less stagnant. 2
We were drinking fizz from cans at sporting events! We were guzzling it at our book clubs! There was a Prosecco bus motoring around the UK, a 1972 Citro n H Van named Celeste proffering white or pink bubbly all over the US of A, and a mobile bar serving Aperol spritzes in the Hamptons. (You can t, of course, make a proper spritz without Prosecco.)
These sassy little vehicles administering liquid decadence made those of us of modest means feel fancy, much like the bubble-icious foot bath at the pedicure spa, or the creamy foam atop a $7 latte. Whether it was Prosecco from Italy, Cava from Spain, or a funky little fizz from Oregon or New York, it was festive, delicious, and within reach.
And before you declare such past pleasures to have been vapid, consider the joy that bubbles can bring. One well-known sparkling wine producer I interviewed for this book told me that he attributed his marked uptick in sales over the previous few years to the legalization of gay marriage. (This one s for you, Cole Porter, in the key of F major: How delightful, how delicious, how de-lovely!)
While everyone s second cousin was gleefully guzzling bubbs at PTA meetings and poker nights, sparkling wine was simultaneously establishing a much more serious identity. The next generation of Maker Movement enthusiasts-those twenty-to-thirtysomething purists who knitted their own socks and braided their own beards-had fallen hard for the new wave of P t-Nats (see Ancestral Method, this page ).
These fizzy, goofy, affordable, artisanal bubblies taste like cider and come sealed with crown caps (like beer). They can be utterly charming in their handmade imperfections, like a mismatched collection of hand-thrown pottery tableware. They are the simplest and most traditional of all sparkling wines, throwbacks to the funky juice our great-grandparents vinified in their farm cellars. So as I write this, it feels right to sip P t-Nat during a quarantine, with one s unwashed, uncolored hair in a messy bun, wearing no bra. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)

A Quick Fizzy World Tour
(Note: These numbers were collected prior to the coronavirus outbreak and resulting economic recession.)
Globally, the wine trade is a $35.3 billion industry, with sparkling wine accounting for approximately 18 percent of that.
The US is by far the biggest importer of sparkling wines, followed by the UK, then Japan, Germany, and Singapore.
Italy is the top sparkling-wine exporter in volume, thanks to Prosecco, the world s most popular bubbly.
Financially speaking, France rules. In 2017, France exported $3.5 billion of sparkling wine, Italy $1.5 billion, and Spain $518 million, with Germany and Australia rounding out the top five. 3

Occasions and Food Matches
Sparkling wine is no longer merely the realm of mimosas and special occasions. You need not be wearing a tuxedo and spooning caviar onto blinis in order to enjoy it. In fact, as Instagram will attest, bubbles make anything fried- pommes frites are my fave-better, and they love potato chips and popcorn.
In short, sparkling wine can and should, in fact, be drunk any day, anytime, with food or without.
If you demand pairing suggestions, however, here s a quick primer.
For an ap ritif, serve Brut Zero Champagne (see this page for more on this).
Prosecco complements light, sweet-and-spicy fare like sushi or the kimchi bowl I m inhaling as I type this (now where did that Prosecco go?).
Cr mant from the Loire goes gangbusters with goat cheese and is my go-to lunch wine.
Lambrusco loves a salumi platter or a pasta dish. A pink Lambrusco is a late-afternoon pleasure.
Riesling Sekt from Germany can offer a crisp counterbalance to rich foods like potatoes, sausages, or cream sauces.
Good Champagne wants to be alongside something roasted, whether it be a bird or a vegetable.
As for dessert, serve Moscato with cookies and fruit.
Or, forget all that and drink sparkling wine, anytime, with anything.
On the higher end, the image-driven Champers labels stocked in airport duty-free boutiques were losing ground as the new wave of cerebral wine aficionados expressed their earnest admiration for the Champagne growers. These are the small-scale craftspeople of northeastern France who labor in small vineyard plots and chilly farm cellars rather than mounting bedazzled marketing blitzes. They make truly vinous wines, for contemplating, discussing, and tasting.
In short, just as the world took a serious turn, so, too, did sparkling wine. And so I feel hopeful. And not just because I ve got to sell books. But because the quality and availability of sparkling wine have never been better. And because bubbly is a tangible and-yes-simple pleasure. In an era of iPad menus, Instagram food porn, Spotify playlists, virtual-reality goggles, and augmented-reality experiences, fizz delivers a full-on 3-D interactive feast for the senses, right here and right now.
Satisfying aromatics. Subtle flavors. The pop of the cork, the whisper of the pour, the sizzle of the foam, the ascent of the bubbles in the glass. The cool sweat beads around the ice bucket. The crunch of ice. Sparkling wine is real.
And no matter how technologically advanced society becomes, no human will ever tire of the incomparable thrill of thousands of tiny bubbles pricking one s palate and exploding with flavor. It s the grown-up version of catching snowflakes on one s tongue. It will never get old.
And you know what? For centuries-perhaps even millennia-sparkling wine has ridden history s high and low points, through wartime and prosperity. (More on this in Chapter 3 .) At the end of the fighting and the grieving, there has always been reason to celebrate. And there always will be.
So maybe the rules have changed. Maybe richer isn t better anymore (thank goodness), and maybe sparkling wine needn t be a symbol of moral perversion any longer. Instead, maybe bubbles should be an inalienable right. Maybe everyone who can healthfully drink wine deserves to feel that pinprick precision, that refreshing acidity, that lovely lingering finish, that shot at a moment of happiness.
Maybe everyone should have access to sparkling wine-or, OK, sparkling juice, for my teetotaling friends and charming children-anytime.
So let s clink glasses. Here s to health, long life, and fizz-fueled happiness. And now, I m going to open a bottle of bubbly.
About This Book
There are thousands upon thousands of sparkling wines in this world. I tasted hundreds upon hundreds during my nine frantic months of research and writing. I had to make some excruciating decisions to narrow down the choices to just a few.
I am, admittedly, a biased individual, possibly to the point of insufferability. I know that I have blind spots. That s why I asked a group of the experts I admire most-critics, sommeliers, journalists, importers, and retailers-to spill on some of their favorites in each chapter. Please reach out and thank these good people on social media if one of their suggestions turns out to be a winner with you and yours.
To all those excellent sparkling wines out there that didn t make it into these pages, I love you. I really do. But I maybe chose to recommend another wine from your region because it was more widely available, or more historically significant, or represented a price tier that needed to be included, or it garnered more group votes in a blind tasting. We re still friends, right?
And while I aimed for consistency in the manner in which the chapters were broken up, ultimately I had to go with what made the most sense. If one nation gets two chapters, while another takes up only a fraction of one chapter, and you happen to live in an underrepresented nation, I am sorry. I don t know what to say, other than, Make more sparkling wine! And export more sparkling wine!
On to vintages. Unlike most other wine styles, bubbly is ofte