A sublime day out

Every year, December is welcomed in the most superb fashion – with the Franschhoek Cap Classique and Champagne Festival.This year, I have TWO sets of FOUR tickets to give away. Tickets for Saturday 3 December have already been SOLD OUT, so if you want to indulge in heavenly fizz this weekend, you want to get in on this action.

I am giving away:

One set of 4 tickets for Saturday 3 December, and
One set of 4 tickets for Sunday 4 December.

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A Particularly Gorgeous Meme Example

I have a soft spot for memes.  I love them. They tickle my funny bone in the best way and they are EVERYWHERE.  Condescending Wonka, Bad Luck Brian, Skeptical Baby, Grumpy Cat… the list is endless. If you’re not sure what I’m on about, do click over to the Memesly.com list of popular memes. But be warned, you may lose hours of productivity…

With the rise of meme hilarity on the internet, people have (as one does on the internet) started making their own memes. Meme generators are everywhere, where you can choose or insert an image and add a caption. Knowing this, I did a little giveaway on the SuperFANS mailing list. We were generously given 5 more double sets of tickets to pass on to deserving SuperFANS (in addition to our previous Magic of Bubbles giveaway). And the winners were chosen through trial by meme!

Here are a few of the best entries I received. A fantastic exercise in MCC driven creativity.

First up was a classic Doge meme:

Then a spectacular cat gif, which really clinched the tickets for the entrant:

A touch of Gatsby never hurt anyone:

And a bit of wrestling action, underlining the important difference between Champagne and our local offerings:

Batman educating Robin on that selfsame difference:

And finally, Ned Stark pointing out important MCC drinking etiquette:

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Magic of Bubbles

Summer is upon us, dearest winos and readers, and few things are as summery and refreshing as the Magic of Bubbles. Whether your taste is expensive and French or divine and local, we are heading into bubbly season. And there’s no better place to get your fizzy on than at the Franschhoek Cap Classique and Champagne Festival.  The festival takes place on the lawns around the Huguenot Monument on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 November. Read on, because I have two double tickets to give away…

The festival promises to be nirvana for those who seek the pleasure of bubbles. Not only will classic French Champagne – the likes of Piper Heidsieck, Champagne Guy Charbaut and Veuve Clicquot – be represented, but also some of the best MCC South Africa has to offer: Pierre Jourdan, Morena, Môreson, La Motte, Boschendal, Leopard’s Leap, Noble Hill, Plaisir de Merle, Anthonij Rupert Wines, Graham Beck Wines, Krone, Pongracz, Simonsig, Steenberg and Villiera. A veritable who’s who of the precious liquid.

Some of Franschhoek’s star restaurants will also be there to ensure festival goers are well fed with delicious menus. Bread & Wine, The Salmon Bar, Haute Cabrière, Le Franschhoek, L’Ermitage, Restaurant at Grand Provence and Mont Rochelle are only a few of those who will be fuelling the hungry Champagne-seekers.

The theme of this year’s festival is Black & White, with the focus on parasols and panama hats. There is even a ‘Best Dressed’ competition, with the best dressed couples on Friday and Saturday walking away with a 2-night safari at Ngala Safari Lodge.

Is your mouth watering yet? Are you thirsty for some luxurious treats? Tickets are R200 pp and are available through Webtickets. But how about you try your luck instead? The fabulous folks from MasterCard and the festival have given me TWO DOUBLE TICKETS to give away for entry to the festival on SUNDAY 30 NOVEMBER. To enter, you need to:

1. Comment on this post and describe to us why you love the precious, fizzy liquid this festival is all about. Be creative, put your heart into it and make me feel the love. Best entry wines.
2. Share this post on Twitter and/or Facebook. You can share the link in your own tweet, or copy and paste the one below:

The Magic of Bubbles awaits! Enter to win double tickets to the #FHKBubby festival http://bit.ly/1xd3SQD

Competition closes Friday 14 November, winners will be chosen and notified via email/Twitter. Please note, tickets will not be transferrable for the Saturday, so ensure you are available the Sunday.

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An Infographic illustrating types of wine glasses (via http://winefolly.com/tutorial/types-of-wine-glasses/)

A simple Google search will produce a mountain of results describing types of wine glasses, categorised for white wine, red wine, dessert wine, sparkling wine and others. The above infographic is a great little at-a-glance summary. So, why all the different shapes? And why match them with specific types of wine? Hard, irrefutable scientific evidence is scarce and flaky at best on this topic, but we’re pretty much OK with that. Science is great but in the end it comes down to your experience and not a study in some obscure journal. One fact that seems obvious and logical is the effect of the stem on the glass. Stemware allows the drinker to hold the glass without touching the bowl and increasing the wine temperature.

The general theory seems to be that the shape of the glass affects how the aromas from the wine reach your nose, thereby impacting how you experience the wine. Red wine glasses have a bigger bowl, which is thought to assist oxidation and opening up the wine. White wine glasses are comparatively smaller, as preventing rapid oxidation can help preserve a fresher flavour of delicate whites.

Dessert wines are served in small glasses. They generally have a very high alcohol content, so smaller serving glasses are desired but it may also be that the small glass directs the liquid further back onto the tongue, lessening the burning effect of the alcohol and increasing the perception of the sweetness.

For champagne glasses the popular choices are the flute or the coupe. The coupe is not as fashionable as it was a few decades ago but is still available. It was especially suited to build champagne towers as they shape allowed the flowing of the bubbly from the top, single glass into all the other in a rather spectacular fountain. The story goes that the original coupe design was shaped on the breast of Marie Antoinette, Madame de Pompadour or a number of other French aristocratic ladies of the time. While this is probably more fantasy than fact, tis a fabulous little tidbit.

The problem with the coupe is that the bubbly loses carbonation quite quickly because of the large surface area. The flute is seen as more elegant and sophisticated nowadays and is much preferred to the coupe. The narrow bowl also retains the carbonation more effectively, keeping your bubbly bubbling for longer and keeping bubbly lovers delighted.

But what about lead crystal vs. glass? Crystal is glass with lead monoxide added to it. This increases the refractory index of the glass. Simply put, it makes it more shiny and sparkly. Lead-free glassware is enhanced by the addition of alternative to lead monoxide, such as zinc- or magnesium oxide.

So where does that leave us in the great glassware debate?

With modern technology improving glassmaking techniques and modern trends affecting our tastes and designs, the choice of glassware available to wine drinkers today is expansive. Coloured glass, etched, embellished, stemless, oddly shaped or classic styles. You can buy them in boxes of 12 for a steal at your local shop or you can import them at eye-watering prices from the best glassware manufacturers in the world. But does it make a difference? That’s probably up to you. Sommeliers, Masters of Wine and other learned wine fundis are likely to insist it makes all the difference. If your nose isn’t quite as sensitive as theirs or your palate as particular, chances are the type of glass you use won’t affect your experience that much, if at all.

So try before you buy, see which you prefer and make sure they’re always filled with good wine.

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