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November 19, 2013 3:40 PM   Subscribe

That Intoxicating Pink
Rose champagne is the intoxicant of choice for courtesans and kings. Beautiful, expensive, and rare, it was beloved by the grandest of the grandes horizontales of nineteenth-century Paris—and the men who could afford to love them. In Second Empire France, the Countess Henkel von Donnersmarck—known to historians of the libido as La Païva, and earlier as Esther Lachmann, late of the Moscow ghetto—demanded magnums of it as a “gratuity” while entertaining clients in the boudoir of her ill-begotten Hotel de la Païva on the Champs-Élysées.
posted by the man of twists and turns (18 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
And yet I first heard of it in The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste. Anything that is the height of expensive luxury is going to get pushed off the cliff of perception within a few generations (cf. Burberry).

I'm not swanking. Personally I have terrible taste. I have drunk pink stuff that bubbled, and loved it, but God knows what it really had in common with proper rose champagne when I bought it for $7 at the TJ's.
posted by Countess Elena at 4:15 PM on November 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I got your pink champagne right here.

(Passion Pop is awesome.)
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:18 PM on November 19, 2013


The best wedding I ever went to involved drinking pink champagne straight out of the bottle on the church steps close to midnight.
posted by Sara C. at 4:47 PM on November 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


Pink Chablis, I am golf looks and tastes like pink Champaign. That's probably what you really got at TJs.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:24 PM on November 19, 2013


Candy Cane: Room 108...and don't forget the bottle of pink champagne. (quote from an underrated B-movie)
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:29 PM on November 19, 2013


Trying to buy some wine at an upscale joint for a gift recently, we got a long lecture on how rosé is the new hotness and how people currently drinking white wine or zinfandel will all have switched within a year.

I think my response was, "What kinda beer ya got?"
posted by klangklangston at 5:39 PM on November 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


Rose was the new hotness like three years ago, and is not the kind of thing you "switch" from.

Then again, wine is not really the kind of beverage that inspires that kind of loyalty. It's much more about what the situation is, what time of year it is, etc.

It's not like beer where either you drink IPA or stout and that is your Beer Of Choice all the time.

(AAAAAAGH THE BEAUJOLAIS IS COMING OUTTTTTTTTTTTTT /winegeek)
posted by Sara C. at 5:46 PM on November 19, 2013


Cracklin' Rosie get on board...
posted by islander at 5:57 PM on November 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Rosé Champagne isn't really so luxurious, although it can be a bit more expensive than blanc de blancs or blended Champagne. What's great about it is that it has a bit more weight to it, so you can serve it with some of the things with which you'd serve a Pinot Noir, such as simply cooked salmon or tuna, but you get the cleansing effervescence.

The article is more than a bit OTT, making rosé Champagne seem like some grand and exotic beverage. "Beautiful, expensive and rare" sounds like marketing bullshit. There are good U.S. rosé sparklers and v. nice Champagnes. Articles like this make it sound as if it were some fabulous drink you might run across once in a lifetime.

Oh and the Veuve Clicquot drunk in the U.S. is just that much sweeter than the version served in France. I had the experience of a side-by-side tasting that offered me that insight. Take from that what you will. In any case, drink small producer/grower Champagne, white or rosé. It'll be better for the price and better as an expression of a single grower's vision rather than a négociant's (Clicquot, Roederer, Moët) mishmash.
posted by the sobsister at 6:00 PM on November 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


A lovely friend of mine once got me a bottle of this, and it was divine. I still have the label stuck to my fridge with a magnet to remind me to grab it if I ever find it again. Why am I stuck at work and not lounging in a satin robe sipping pink bubbly from a cut crystal flute? There is no justice in the world.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 6:46 PM on November 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


I don't think beer drinkers have the same type of beer all the time either, if nothing else the success of seasonal beers would suggest that that isn't true.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:18 PM on November 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Well, sure, but I've never met a single wine drinker who even thinks of "switching" from X wine to Y wine. You drink different things in different situations.

Whereas most beer drinkers I know at least have certain styles, or even certain brands/breweries they prefer, and it does work at least somewhat in the context of "switching" being a conceivable thing.

I'm not exempting myself, either -- I'm still mourning the loss of Sixpoint Bengal Tiger IPA after a year away from New York. I've never felt that way about any particular wine, despite being pretty serious about wine.
posted by Sara C. at 7:26 PM on November 19, 2013


Well, sure, but I've never met a single wine drinker who even thinks of "switching" from X wine to Y wine. You drink different things in different situations.

Whereas most beer drinkers I know at least have certain styles, or even certain brands/breweries they prefer, and it does work at least somewhat in the context of "switching" being a conceivable thing.


I think you are overemphasizing the variability of wine drinkers, and the stability of beer drinkers. Wine drinkers absolutely have styles, whether of grapes, wineries, or patterns of winemaking, that they switch between, and beer lovers will, despite being primarily an IPA or stout person, drink seasonally- and meal-appropriate beers of wildly different styles.

All of which to say, people are pretty consistent in their faddishness and enjoyments, and there's a lot to like about that.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:26 PM on November 19, 2013


I was invited a few months ago to Istanbul, that watery palimpsest of lost civilizations, where the house of Dom Pérignon was hosting a boondoggle and a bash on the very edge of Europe in honor of their latest creation, a true beluga of bubbly. If each vintage has its distinctive hue, the glass of Dom Pérignon Vintage 2002 that I contemplated in solitude was a mysterious shade of amber. “The Dark Jewel,” Richard Geoffrey, Dom Perignon’s present-day chef de cave, has dubbed it.

Seated alone on a sunny open veranda in a Sultan’s Palace on the fast flowing Bosphorus, the stretch of choppy water that divides Europe from Asia...


He only got to go because I couldn't make it, what with all the things I had going on that weekend.
posted by jquinby at 4:28 AM on November 20, 2013


"A small mistake can turn the champagne into an unwanted, unsalable red, blue or brown. "

Blue champagne! That sounds awesome! (I'm not very classy, grin)
posted by alasdair at 8:15 AM on November 20, 2013


Oh, it so is.
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:00 AM on November 20, 2013


I have always preferred Pink Champale.
posted by Cookiebastard at 2:28 PM on November 20, 2013


Did someone say "Blue Champagne"?
posted by the sobsister at 6:12 PM on November 20, 2013


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