A true way to love your MOM

MIMOSA FOR MOM

If you’re reading the headline of this article and suddenly becoming overwhelmed with feelings of surprise and slap-yourself-on-the-forehead forgetfulness, do not fear! Mother’s Day is not until May 12, so you have plenty of time to pick out the prettiest flowers and prepare to show your mom just how much you love her on her calendar shout out day. Since you are now fully aware of this momentous motherly day of May, you have plenty of time to go shopping for all the ingredients you’ll need to make some delicious Mother’s Day mimosas to go with that ever-delicious breakfast in bed that you totally had planned but you were just waiting until this week to finalize all the recipes.

Mimosa image via Shutterstock

 

The classic mimosa is simple enough to prepare, as long as you have the three basic ingredients: orange juice, champagne and orange liqueur. The beauty of this simplicity is that this cocktail is open to plenty of interpretation, and happily welcomes new ingredients to make more exciting and fun drinks. Sure, mom will appreciate whatever you give her on Mother’s Day, and while going the traditional route will always be acceptable, providing some delicious twists on the classic mimosa will both impress her, and give you some fun new mimosa recipes for future brunch parties. So celebrate your mom this year with some of our favorite mimosas, and don’t forget to give her a big hug and a kiss on her special day. Your mom birthed you, raised you, fed you, clothed you and got you to where you are today, wherever that may be. She needs a drink! Cheers, and Happy Mother’s Day! (Love you Mom)

Blushing Mimosas

Adapted from MyRecipes.com

2 cups orange juice (not from concentrate)
1 cup pineapple juice, chilled
2 Tbsp grenadine
1 (750-milliliter) bottle Champagne or sparkling wine, chilled

Combine first three ingredients. Pour equal parts juice mixture and Champagne into flutes.

Grapefruit Mimosas

Adapted from YumSugar

8 large ruby red grapefruits
1 bottle of prosecco, chilled

Juice the grapefruits and pour the juice into a pitcher. Pour half the bottle of prosecco into the pitcher. Stir well.

Merry Mimosa

Adapted from Sips,etc

3 cups orange juice, chilled
1 cup cranberry juice cocktail, chilled
1 bottle Champagne or sparkling wine, chilled.
Garnish with an orange peel and/or frozen cranberries.

In a large pitcher, combine the juices. Add the Champagne before serving. Garnish with an orange peel and frozen cranberries.

Strawberry, Lemon and Basil Mimosa

Adapted from FoodNetwork.com

3/4 cup packed fresh basil leaves
Juice from 2 large lemons (about 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice)
1/2 cup agave or honey
8 medium fresh or frozen strawberries, thawed and sliced
One 750ml bottle Prosecco, chilled
1/2 cup soda water or sparkling water, chilled

In a pitcher, combine the basil, lemon juice and agave. Using a wooden spoon, crush the basil. Stir in the strawberries, Prosecco and soda water. Serve in chilled Champagne flutes.

Orange Cream Mimosa

Adapted from FoodNetwork.com

2 1/2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice (5 to 6 oranges)
1 orange, zested
1 cup half-and-half
1 cup superfine sugar
1 bottle sparkling wine or Champagne
Strawberries, for garnish

In a blender, combine the orange juice, zest, half-and-half and sugar and blend until the sugar is dissolved. Pour the mixture into a shallow pan and freeze until hard. Remove the frozen mixture and let sit to soften slightly, about 10 minutes. Scrape out a small scoop with a spoon and put it into a Champagne flute. Fill the glass with Champagne. Garnish with strawberries.

Create a Tasteful, fun Bar Cart for your guests!

It’s not hard to create a Tasteful   Mobil cart in your apartment or house.  Now is the time to recharge to full energy and check off all the boxes that you’ve wanted to do for some time now.  It’s the time of year to really get motivated to start new exhilarating projects and actually finish them.

After much entertaining and being entertained in 2012, I’ve noticed that nothing makes more of a statement at an intimate gathering than the hosts ‘bar’.  This is because it’s not just a place to make a cocktail or pour a glass of wine, but yet it’s a time when you are interacting with other guests and can ‘make a drink’ and even a friend at the bar.  How many times have you said,  “Want to make another drink”?  I’m sure plenty.   Your bar is your chance to show your guests your personal style and since it is the center focus of your party, wouldn’t you want it to be a masterpiece?

As we  have entered  into 2013 it is time.  Time to clean up your ‘bar’, get rid of the clutter and start with a clean slate filled with fabulous wines going into 2013. So wipe off the lingering champagne drops from your  previous party, get ride of those half full bottles and start fresh with a stylish yet tidy bar (get rid of clutter!).

 Here is some great   interior décor,  few ideas on prepping your bar for another  amazing year!

Essentials for creating a ‘Tasteful’ bar!

1. Always have Pellegrino glass bottles
2. 2 bottles of nice champs (Veuve Cliquot, Louis Roederer, Ruinart, Moet etc.)
3. Add fake or real limes in a nice dish
4. A pop of color can add a nice touch to your bar. Try adding a colorful flower in a vase
5. Incorporate some sort of interesting glassware
6. Throw a few fab crystal wine stoppers on for decoration or slices of geode coasters in a fun color to go with flowers
7. Come up with a theme and make sure everything complements each other. We  love working with metallics, such as gold with a bright pop of color of fuchsia or cobalt blue
8. Keep out Clutter!!

 

Volia! What do you think?

 

When to drink Champagne

When asked on what occasions she drank champagne, the late Madame Bollinger famously replied,

“I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory.

I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.”

How to serve Champagne

To open a bottle of champagne, first remove the foil and the wire from around the cork. Hold the bottle at 45 degrees, with the base in your strong hand and the cork in the other. Twist the bottle while holding the cork steady (if you do it the other way around, you risk shearing the cork). The carbon dioxide in the bottle, along with your gentle encouragement, should result in the cork emerging slowly, not with a loud bang, but with a satisfied, seductive sigh.

Champagne is best served chilled, straight from a cool cellar or after a couple of hours (not days) in the fridge. To pour, grasp the bottle by the base with your thumb inside the indentation.

It is better to serve champagne in “tulips” or “flutes”, which retain the wine’s effervescence, rather than the “saucers” – allegedly modelled on Marie-Antoinette’s breasts – which allow the sparkle to dissipate.

You don’t have to treat champagne just as an aperitif, as it goes well with such foods as caviar, rich ptés, smoked salmon, gravadlax, oysters or lobsters. Sweet champagnes are perfect with sweet soufflés, fruit tarts and strawberries and cream.

Champagne comes from the northernmost vineyards in France, in the valley of the river Marne, centred round Epernay and Rheims. Only wines from this designated area, made from chardonnay, pinot meunier and pinot noir by the “champagne method”, may call themselves champagne.

Tips

· The word champagne guarantees the wine’s geographical origin, but not its quality. It is better to drink well-made sparkling wine than poorly made champagne

· A champagne-stopper will keep the bubbles fresh for up to 36 hours

· If you are out of crème de cassis, a thimbleful of Ribena works surprisingly well for kir royale

This week we are hosting the Grand Marques Champagne Tasting at our Store in Los Angeles, hope you can come in and taste some bubblies.

http://www.melandrose.com/istar.asp?a=6&id=134475

Do different drinks effect our spirits differently?

what mood are you in?

 

 

There must be a reason alcoholic beverages are called “spirits.” Do different drinks affect our spirits differently? DIA went digging. We found plenty of theories — most of them from armchair analysts who have “proof” that: “Champagne makes me happy.” “Wine makes me flirty.” “Beer makes me tired.” “Whiskey turns me into a jerk.”

“It’s the alcohol, stupid!” Yes, WE know. But is there more to it?

There is lots of scientific jibber jabber that says the whole thing is a fake, and its just based on the amount of alcohol you are consuming, and there should be no difference between various types.

What do we think? The amount of alcohol you are consuming obviously has to do with it – but some people have different drinking habits with different drinks. If someone loves red wine, and hates beer, they will probably end up drinking more red wine, and at a faster pace. In this case, they will get the impression that they are more flirty when they drink red wine, compared to when they drink beer, if only because they are getting more alcohol into their body.

Or maybe its the mood that comes first: we choose a beverage based on our moods. When we’re sad, we drink whiskey. When we’re happy, it’s champagne. When we want to party, its tequila. That could give us the impression that the drink actually makes us feel the way we are already feeling.

What do you think? Do you have moods associated to certain drinks?

Pairing Wine with Cheese or Cheese with Wine!!!!

 

At our Wine Tastings, I have often been   asked to tell which wine matched with which cheese. The funny thing is I never thought about cheeses, just cheese. I recently asked my co-workers & friend a similar question about pairing wine and cheese and most of the time the answer, while so amazingly obvious, surprised me
Shawn is our proprietor at our store and as such he is often asked to pair wines with cheese. With very few exceptions, cheese in a restaurant means a cheese plate, and pairing wines with an assortment of cheeses changes the equation entirely. In truth, that’s probably what most people mean when they ask about cheese and wine pairings: not a specific recommendation for a particular cheese, but rather a wine that is flexible enough to pair with many cheeses!

And here I’ve been going on and on and specific pairings for years! I’ll follow up this article with some specific pairings. After all, there does come a time when you have a bottle of wine open throughout a meal and you want to finish off the meal with the last of the bottles and just a bite of cheese. For today, let’s take a look at wines that work with cheese in a more general sense, beginning with Shawn’s recommendation:

Marsala

When most people think of Marsala, they probably think of veal or chicken sautéed and then finished off with the slightly sweet Italian wine know as Marsala. That’s certainly a valid and popular impression of what Marsala might be and one good use for it, but Marsala, like almost every wine, has a more generic example as well as some particularly exceptional bottlings.

Marsala is a fortified wine, similar to Sherry in many ways in that it reaches its peak when carefully aged. The best examples often are vintage dated or are soleras (barrel aged wines of multiple vintages) that have ages of 10 or even 20 years noted on the label.

With this level of maturity, the generally delicate in nature Marsala becomes intensely flavored with notes of almonds, dates and figs. All of these are happy to pair with cheese, particularly ripe, well-aged wash rind cheese, though their high acidity and relatively light body makes them particularly adept with a myriad of pairings.

Sherry

Mentioning that Marsala is similar to Sherry was no accident here, as Sherry easily comes as the second option on this list and one that is both easier to find as well as more affordable than Marsala.

Sherry is a fortified wine made in Spain. It comes in many styles, from light and airy fino to heavy and sweet. The dry versions can sometimes be a little to lean to pair with anything but the most delicate cheese, but when you move onto something with a touch of sweetness, like a Pale Cream Sherry, you can really find some explosive pairings. A runny, pungent cheese is often the perfect partner for the salty, complex flavors of a Pale Cream Sherry, though the style that was once sold as rich or sweet Oloroso, both of which are now prohibited terms when it comes to labeling Sherry, was an absolute perfect match: rich but not heavy, sweet but not sugary and with a tang to match the greatest cheese.

Demi-sec

Both Marsala and Sherry are somewhat esoteric wines, which is why they work so well when it comes to pairing with a variety of cheese. The keys to their success are savory flavors and high acidity. But that is not the only option for those looking to pair wines with multiple cheeses. Sweetness, as with Pale Cream Sherry, is a fine partner for most cheese as long as it’s not taken too far, and there are several wines that are right at home with cheese.

Take for example demi-sec sparkling wine, either Champagne, sparkling wine or even Prosecco. All of these have great acidity and scrubbing bubbles that help balance the richness of the fattiest cheeses. Sugar brightened fruit allows you to contrast the funky flavors of your favorite cheese with a sweet fruit pairing as opposed to the more complimentary flavors of the Sherry and Marsala.

Riesling

Perhaps one of the greatest cheese friendly wines, Riesling often has it all: a bit of sweetness, bright acidity, sweet fruit flavors and if the wine has some age on it, a nice array of savory elements. All of this adds up to a wine that can match well with many cheeses. The generally lighter character of many Riesling really give flexibility for the freshest, buttery cheese or hard aged examples to blues, the wine stumping cheese!

One of the maxims of food and wine pairing is to try to match the intensity of the dish with the intensity of the wine. This is where the many components of Riesling come into play. With so many aspects available to compliment or contrast with the flavors of the cheese, Riesling is able to highlight one aspect of a cheese without dominating the scene.

White Zinfandel

 A well done white Zin is fruity, fresh and a little sweet, which makes it perfectly suitable for pairing with fresher cheese as well as light blues. That sweetness serves as a backstop for more assertively flavored cheese and salty hard cheese. It may not be the perfect match for any one cheese, but we’re speaking in generalities here. A light rose, you can find off dry examples from the Loire, Spain, and Italy as well, is a charming partner for so many cheeses that we simply can’t ignore it.

So what will it be for you- Wine to match your cheese or Cheese to match your wine! 

8 Champagne Cocktails for Valentine’s

Valentine’s Day Champagne Cocktail Roundup
8 ways to toast your loved one

Valentine’s Day is the perfect occasion for a Champagne cocktail. They’re versatile. You can make them sweet, dry, fruity, floral or spiced.

Whether you’re toasting with your true love or a group of friends, here are some Champagne cocktails to celebrate with this Valentine’s Day.
Champagne Cocktail — The traditional and original Champagne cocktail

Shrinking Violet Champagne Cocktail – A lovely color and light flavor perfect for any special occasion

Sparkling Hibiscus Champagne Cocktail – Simple to make yet beautiful to look at

Kir Royale – Lightly fruity classic

Black Velvet – For the beer lovers

Orangecello Champagne Cocktail – A fun treat made with tasty Italian liqueur

Lemon Herb Sparkler – Galliano makes for a very different Champagne cocktail

Blooming Fizz – Lemon sorbet and elderflower liqueur make a delicate experience

Here is a great Champagne Cocktail

Ingredients

3 oz. Chilled Champagne

1/2 oz. Cognac (optional)

2 Dashes Angostura Bitters

1 Sugar Cube

Garnish: Maraschino Cherry & Lemon Twist

Preparation

Drop a sugar cube into a Champagne flute. Soak the sugar with the bitters. Pour in the cognac and fill the glass with Champagne. Drop in a cherry, and add the lemon twist on the rim.

New Year’s Eve Champagne Q&A

Celebrate 2012

As midnight approaches on December 31st, more than a few of us will crack open a bottle or two of champagne to help toast in the New Year.

With a few choice facts about the bubbly stuff, you can look knowledgeable rather than just tipsy when you drain your flute. Here are a few little nuggets you can share with fellow revelers.

1. What exactly is champagne?
Strictly speaking, champagne is a sparkling wine that comes from the Champagne region of northeastern France.

If it’s a bubbly wine from another region, it’s sparkling wine, not champagne.

While many people use the term “champagne” generically for any sparkling wine, the French have maintained their legal right to call their wines champagne for over a century. The Treaty of Madrid, signed in 1891 established this rule, and the Treaty of Versailles reaffirmed it.

The European Union helps protect this exclusivity now, although certain American producers can still generically use “champagne” on their labels if they were using the term before early 2006.

2. How is champagne made?
Sparkling wines can be made in a variety of ways, but traditional champagne comes to life by a process called the methode Champenoise. Champagne starts its life like any normal wine. The grapes are harvested, pressed, and allowed to undergo a primary fermentation. The acidic results of this process are then blended and bottled with a bit of yeast and sugar so it can undergo a secondary fermentation in the bottle. (It’s this secondary fermentation that gives champagne its bubbles.)

This new yeast starts doing its work on the sugar, and then dies and becomes what’s known as lees. The bottles are then stored horizontally so the wine can “age on lees” for 15 months or more.

After this aging, winemakers turn the bottles upside down so the lees can settle to the bottom. Once the dead yeast has settled, producers open the bottles to remove the yeast, add a bit of sugar known as dosage to determine the sweetness of the champagne, and slip a cork onto the bottle. Mental Floss: Why is the drinking age 21?

3. What’s so special about the Champagne region?

Several factors make the chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier grapes grown in the Champagne region particularly well suited for crafting delicious wines. The northern location makes it a bit cooler than France’s other wine-growing regions, which gives the grapes the proper acidity for sparkling wine production. Moreover, the porous, chalky soil of the area — the result of large earthquakes millions of years ago — aids in drainage.

4. Do I have to buy champagne to get good sparkling wine?

Not at all. Although many champagnes are delightful, most the world’s wine regions make tasty sparkling wines of their own. You can find highly regarded sparkling wines from California, Spain, Italy, Australia, and other areas without shelling out big bucks for Dom Perignon.

5. Speaking of Dom Perignon, who was this guy?
Contrary to popular misconception, the namesake of the famous brand didn’t invent champagne. But Perignon, a Benedictine monk who worked as cellar master at an abbey near Epernay during the 17th and 18th centuries, did have quite an impact on the champagne industry.

In Perignon’s day, sparkling wine wasn’t a really sought-after beverage. In fact, the bubbles were considered to be something of a flaw, and early production methods made producing the wine somewhat dangerous. (Imprecise temperature controls could lead to fermentation starting again after the wine was in the bottle.

If one bottle in a cellar exploded and had its cork shoot out, a chain reaction would start.) Perignon helped standardize production methods to avoid these explosions, and he also added two safety features to his wines: thicker glass bottles that better withstood pressure and rope snare that helped keep corks in place. Mental Floss: The men behind your favorite liquors

6. What’s the difference between brut and extra brut?
You’ll see these terms on champagne labels to describe how sweet the good stuff in the bottle is. As mentioned above, a bit of sugar known as dosage is added to the bottle right before it’s corked, and these terms describe exactly how much sugar went in. Extra brut has less than six grams of sugar per liter added, while brut contains less than 15 grams of additional sugar per liter. Several other classifications exist, but drier champagnes are more common.

7. Why do athletes spray each other with champagne after winning titles?
Throughout its history, champagne has been a celebratory drink that’s made appearances at coronations of kings and the launching of ships. However, the bubbly-spraying throwdowns that now accompany athletic victories are a much more recent development.

When Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt won the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans race in 1967, they ascended the winner’s podium with a bottle of champagne in hand. Gurney looked down and saw team owner Carroll Shelby and Ford Motors CEO Henry Ford II standing with some journalists and decided to have a bit of fun. Gurney gave the bottle a shake and sprayed the crowd, and a new tradition was born.

8. What’s sabrage?
After the French Revolution, members of Napoleon’s cavalry decided that the normal pop-and-foam ritual of opening a bottle of champagne just wasn’t as visually impressive as it could be. They responded by popularizing a way of opening bottles using a sword.

The technique, known as sabrage, involved holding a bottle at arm’s length while quickly running a saber down the bottle towards the neck. When the saber’s blade struck the glass lip just beneath the cork, the glass breaks, shooting off the cork and neck of the bottle while leaving the rest of the vessel intact.

Ceremonial “champagne swords” are available for just this purpose, and if you can pull off this trick, you’ll be the toast of your shindig. (Be careful, though. A flying champagne cork is already you’ll-put-your-eye-out dangerous, and adding a ring of ragged broken glass to the equation doesn’t make the whole endeavor any safer.) Mental Floss: Drinking stories that put yours to shame.

Now that you know all about Champagne & Sparkling wine, you can use the link below to see our vast selection of them.

http://www.melandrose.com/asp_pages/champagne.asp

Dom Perignon 2002 Andy Warhol Tribute

When Two Icons Collide ……. A Champagne created and suitable for Framing… Paying tribute to Andy Warhol, creative genius and one of the most illustrious artists of the 20th century, this exclusive collection of three bottles was created by the Design Laboratory at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art & Design.  “The 2002 Dom Perignon is at first intensely floral, with perfumed jasmine that dominates the bouquet. With time in the glass the wine gains richness as the flavors turn decidedly riper and almost tropical. Ripe apricots, passion fruit and peaches emerge from this flashy, opulent Dom Perignon.” 96 Points, Robert Parker   Andy Warhol tribute Dom Perignon

Watch a Video on A Tribute to Ady Warhol Dy Dom Perignon”  – click link below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT196xwoflA&feature=related

 

 

Drink First With Your Eyes and Then Your Taste Buds

France’s most refreshing pink drink is the main wine of summer. It’s fresh, crisp, and just the right match for summer salad, pizzas, and almost anything off the grill!

Rose is something you drink first with your eyes, and then with your taste buds.  That’s what a Frenchman told me when we were sipping a coppery pink version that tasted like fresh peaches and cream in a glass last time we were in France.  He wasn’t kidding.  For the advocates, French rose is visual appearance ranging from palest light pink to deepest strawberry red.  The difference in colors is matched only by the variety of styles:  what is light, crisp, refreshing in one region, is full bodied, intense and silky smooth in another region.  And summer is the prefect time to enjoy   rose.  There ‘s just something about summer food-grilled vegetables, steaks, salads, simple seafood dishes-that calls for a glass of something cool and pink.

The most convincing (although maybe not the most romantic) reason to drink French rose comes down to value.  We go through our fair share of rose at our store, so price is very much an issue when it comes down to sales.  Some of the Cult Italian producers rose reaches upward of $80-$100 a bottle. Some of the local California roses approach $40s.  And while you could spend upwards of  $120 on a bottle of Chateau D’Esclans”Garrus” from Provence, you really don’t have to. J  There are plenty of exceptional French roses from Provence, and beyond that are made for summer sipping that are food-friendly, and cost less than $30 a bottle!  The cooler climates of France produces higher acid and lower sugar and alcohol than most Spanish or many New World roses, making them perfect at the summer table.

To be more specific we need to spend time first on explaining color.  Rose wines get their shade from the skins of red grapes.  The grape varietal and the length of time the juice has contact with the skin determine the intensity of color.  Grape skins are also what give a wine it’s tannins, so darker roses are often fuller bodied than their lighter counterparts, like the bright red Greache-driven wines from Tavel in the southern Rhone, or the Cabernet- and Merlot base version From Bordeaux.  Conversely the pale and pretty roses from Provence and the Loire tend to be crisp and lighter in style.

Color can give you other hints about the wine as well.   One of the main things we share with customers is before any tasting; you should first look at the color. This can spot defects.  Then you need to ask yourself some questions such as “Is it a bright and fresh color? Is it beautiful?  And finally going back to the French gentleman – First look and then stick your nose in!

Three of our favorite roses from Provance are   Domaine Tempier Bandol Rose from Provance, Chateau de Pampelonne Rose and Domaine Ott Rose.

There’s a world of rose beyond Provence and, depending on your mood and menu, you might want to venture out to   Languedoc-Roussillon region.  There are plenty more roses from burgundy, Sancerre and Loire Valley that are Pinot based that will be a great accompaniment with a flank steak or grilled pork, smoked trout or pate.  The Roses are also a must with fresh goat cheese or spicy ethnic cuisines from Thai to Mexican or Indian foods.

So, may be as superficial as this could be said: “Judge a glass by its color.”

moet & chandon tasting

Recently we hosted a Moet & Chandon tasting with special guest Benoit Gouez the Chef de Cav of the Champagne house.  This is THE guy who oversees all production and ensures each batch upholds the same standards and flavor profiles for such iconic bottles as White Star and Nectar Imperial.   Besides the usual merriment and fun of our tastings, two wonderful things came from the event: 1. A delicious new cocktail recipe thanks to the Consumer Development Manager who was pouring, and 2. a fabulous new cheese that our cheese monger recommended to have with the champagne.

We sampled four Moet & Chandon Champagnes: White Star Imperial, Rose Imperial, Grand Vintage 2000, and Nectar Imperial. While I’ll admit my personal favorite was the Nectar Imperial with the lesser expensive White Star at a close second, I was even more impressed by the simple addition of a squeezed lime wedge. For those champagne purists, I really do encourage you to try it, that little burst of flavor and acidity took the champagne to a whole new level – and brought out the inherent sweetness of the champagne.

The triple cream ’fromage’ we sampled with the tasting was out of this world. It was vivid at first and then creamy and altogether heavenly in texture, with a brightness of flavor that I have never had in a cheese before. So what was this miracle cheese? It’s called Brillat Savarin De Seine Et Marne. It’s from Normandy, made from cow’s milk, and a  little on the expensive side at $29.99 a pound,  but truly worth it. http://www.melandrose.com/istar.asp?a=6&id=437

A night of indulgence, and one to remember. Jealous you weren’t there? Better make it to one of our next tastings!