http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/dining/wine-school-champagne.html 2014-10-03 00:21:45 Wine School: Champagne Let’s examine Champagne as a wine, an agricultural product made of grapes and intended not as the life of the party but to be consumed with food at a meal. === Wine School, a monthly column, invites you to drink wine with Eric Asimov. In each installment, Mr. Asimov chooses a type of wine for you to try at home. After a month, Mr. Asimov posts his reaction to the wine and addresses readers’ thoughts and questions. You knew it was coming: Champagne. And why not? In anticipation of the holidays, American wine consumers level their shopping carts directly at the sparkling wine aisle. More Champagne is sold in the fourth quarter of each year than in the first three quarters combined, which tells you two things: First, we understand that Champagne and other sparkling wines can be celebratory beverages like no others. Second, we have no idea what we are missing the rest of the year. The Champagne industry has done a wonderful job of conveying that Champagne is a luxury good, dressed up in its designer bottle and handsome box, ready to pop and pour and dance the night away. At Wine School, we will ignore all that. Instead, we will examine Champagne as a wine, an agricultural product made of grapes and intended not as the life of the party but to be consumed with food at a meal. The trick is to think of Champagne as wearing a pair of tattered jeans rather than a tuxedo. In its role as a wine, Champagne is remarkably versatile, wonderful with an astonishingly wide array of foods. It can be great with sushi and seafood in many guises. But it’s also terrific with foods that might be considered too déclassé, like popcorn, fried chicken and even pizza. Paradoxically, one of the few foods I don’t like with Champagne is probably its most famous partner: caviar. It tends to make Champagne taste metallic and, in my opinion, goes far better with chilled vodka. They are: Louis Roederer Brut Premier (Maisons Marques et Domaines, Oakland, Calif.), $40 Charles Heidsieck Brut Réserve (Rémy Cointreau U.S.A., New York), $48 Pol Roger Réserve Brut (Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York), $40 Each is a blend of the three main Champagne grapes, pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot meunier, and each is a non-vintage wine, meaning it is a blend of wines from quite a few different years. They are all good introductory Champagnes, delicious even if you need no introduction to Champagne. Even so, quality shoots up dramatically when you invest in and age vintage Champagnes, which the big houses tend to dote on with greater care and attention. Those wines are too expensive and not widely enough available for our purposes. If you cannot find any of these wines, here are a few others I recommend: Bollinger Special Cuvée, Delamotte Brut, Alfred Gratien Brut, Ruinart Brut, Billecart-Salmon Brut Réserve, Henriot Brut Souverain, Bruno Paillard Première Cuvée Brut, Philipponnat Royale Réserve and Taittinger Brut Réserve. In addition, numerous small producers make excellent Champagnes, which are well worth your time. For this assignment, we are looking for blended brut wines, but if you can only find blanc de blancs, made entirely of chardonnay; bland de noirs, made of only pinot noir or pinot meunier; or rosé Champagnes, well, why not? But your experience may be slightly different. Please make a point to drink these Champagnes at a meal, with food, as you would other wines. Don’t worry about flutes or glasses designed for Champagne; I think it tastes best in ordinary white-wine glasses.