What to Serve on New Year's EveChampagne is for Douchebags. But so is New Year's Eve. So You Might Have to Buy Some
You know what the Japanese consume to celebrate New Year’s Eve? Soba noodles. Yes, fiber-rich, protein-laden, buckwheat pasta. This is how a reasonable culture welcomes the year. It’s also why the yen is worth a half of a cent. In America we do’t plan for the future. We are going to put the future o a credit carad made of Bitcoin. We dare the New Year by eating caviar, getting drunk, lighting fireworks, and chugging Champagne straight from the bottle. I’m neither an expert nor a fan of sparkling wine. I enjoy bubbles the way any Jew does after a lifetime of seltzer. But I also know that the two ways to hide flavor are carbonation and cold. If your mom gave you warm flat Coke to calm your stomach when you were sick, then she will probably be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. You also were shocked to find out how bad cola really tastes. But I get it. You have to front as though you really liked the crappy product. Just like you got a diamond when you got engaged and ate a turkey on Thanksgiving, you’re going to drink bubbles on New Year’s Eve. But there are less dumb ways to do it. If you’re going to a dress-up party that’s trying to be fancy, you probably have to bring Champagne. Like wine that’s actually from the castle-filled region 90 miles east of Paris. And it won’t be cheap. Champagne can be delicious. It’s can have warm toasty flavors. It’s often got tiny bubbles. It’s made with three grapes: pinot noir, chardonnay, and pinot meunier, which is a grape I’ve only heard about when people list the third grape in Champagne. The trouble with Champagne is that it’s like a mall in a Vegas hotel: it’s all about brand names. Some Champagne houses have been around since the 1700s, get name-checked in songs, and sport labels that look like logos on the Real Housewives’ purses. That’s because Dom Pérignon, Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, and Krug are all owned by LVMH, the company that makes Fendi, Christian Dior, and Givency. Luckily you don’t have to buy one of those, because there are good off-brand $30 bottles of Champagne. I like Trudon’s Emblematis, Ariston’s Aspasie, Alexandre Le Brun’s Tradition, and Pierre Mineral. But if you’re having a non-tuxedo dinner with people who you don’t have to show off in front of, you can save a lot of money by buying sparkling wine from anywhere else in the world besides Champagne. Even places in France. Sparkling wine made outside of Champagne goes by “crémant,” which means creamy, which sounds less gross in French as does “threesome.” I buy a lot of it from Alsace, especially a $20 bottle of Allimant Laugner Cremant d’Alsace Rosé because it’s pink and that’s fun. But I also buy cremant de lots of places: Loire, Limoux, Jura, and Burgundy. The Antech Extra Brut Crémant de Limoux ($16) is nice too. Cava, a Spanish sparkling wine, works well enough. I’ve never had this cava, because it’s $100, but showing up with a bottle shaped like a torpedo would be baller. I have no idea how you put it down on a table. You probably never do. Just walk around palming it like a quarterback yelling, “Buy my crypto!”
I have had lots of this $25 cava, which is officially called Segura Viudas, but my lovely wife Cassandra and I call it Pimp Cava, because it wears more ridiculous jewelry than Bishop Don Juan.
Three summers ago, I was in Italy when a guy ordered a bottle of sparkling wine for the table called Ferrari. It’s $25, delicious, 100 percent chardonnay, and, most importantly, says FERRARI on it. If you’re bringing a $75 Veuve Clicquot yellow label to a party instead of a wine that says FERRARI on it, you are doing 2026 wrong.
American wine isn’t usually a better deal than European bottles, but I really like Argyle Blanc de Noirs Willamette Valley Brut Sparkling Wine I got for $15. If it were a big party, I might even go with the $17 bottles that Sofia Coppola made from her dad’s Napa vineyard: Francis Coppola “Sofia” Monterey County Brut Sparkling Rosé. But if you want Champagne on New Year’s Eve, you might as well enjoy it to end 2025. Because the American assumption that next year is going to be awesome for us is becoming more and more questionable. You're currently a free subscriber to The Corrupt Wine Writer. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
|
Monday, December 29, 2025
What to Serve on New Year's Eve
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
On Monday, Leon County Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey rejected Bear Warriors United's request for a temporary injunction to halt the s...
-
Police say information from a Reddit tipster who had a strange encounter with another man on a sidewalk outside Brown University provi...
-
The Trump administration has launched a new federal initiative called the U.S. Tech Force, aimed at hiring about 1,000 engineers and t...
No comments:
Post a Comment