Any suggestions for first champagne?
 

Hello, all! I am new here at fodor's and would like some advice. My husband and my anniversary is coming up soon and we wanted to make it extra special by having some champagne to celebrate. This will be my first alcoholic anything and would like any suggestions on what we should chose. Help!

Go to a good wine shop in your neighborhood, explain the situation and ask for the best that you can afford. (There is nothing so nasty as cheap champagne - and it could put you off the decent stuff forever.)

Also - let them know if you will be drining it alone - or with anything else (strawberries?? some other foood) since that will affect the choice.

And might I suggest that if you can only afford inexpensive Champagne that you have some orange juice on hand and make a Mimosa (Champagne & OJ). I can almost guarantee that you won't actually like Champagne if this is your very first alcohol experience, but Mimosas are quite tasty!

For a non wine drinker, champagne can be a bit hard to enjoy, even the good stuff. I would recommend trying something like a Spumante, which is a light, Italian sparkling wine. It usually comes in a champagne type bottle, and pops and bubbles just like champagne. It is however, a bit lighter and has a tiny hint of sweetness - it goes down very easily!

Pacific Echo, Laurent Perrier,Pommery, Taittinger, Veuve Clicquoe, Domaine Carneros are all some that you can get for under $30. Stay away from Korbel and Andre unless you are making Mimosas.

Yes! Try Freixenet semi-seco (or semi-dry)

I've served it when folks said "thanks, I don't like champagne" and they enjoyed it (celebrating wins at tennis matches, New Year's Eve, etc).

It's cheap (around $10), not too dry (bruts), not too sweet (spumantes) - just right. (Don't buy the Freixent black bottle - it's very dry and you won't like it.

Wine buffs - don't flame me. I disagree with the "best you can buy" approach. People who haven't had wine or champagne before don't enjoy their first sips of brut champagnes or sparkling wines. There's a reason that people start with sweet wines (reislings, etc) and move their way to white zinfandels. Unfortuntely, many don't move on past white zin.

Most newbies to wine that I've known like a Piesporter if I order it for the table.

Disclaimer - my experiences stem from entertaining folks from the South who are often Southern Baptists who "don't like wine" and are used to the "Wine of the South - Sweet Iced Tea!" :-)

Schramsburg (sp?) has a great Blanc de Noir - one of my favorites for around $30/bottle. It's actually a sparkling wine - being from California and all, but is just d-lish.

An addendum -
But PLEASE buy "the best you can buy" for me! I love champagne and will appreciate it.

I also agree with the mimosa (or bellini) suggestion. Make sure to have OJ in the morning so you can start the day happy if you have leftover champagne.

Trivia question - what is the name of the straw or raffia covered bottle of the sweet/ inexpenive wine that you saw everywhere in the 70's. Can't believe I can't remember.

I'd also like to emphasize getting the best you can afford. From my days in college and summer theatre, I only knew cheap champagne and always said I hated the stuff. It wasn't until about my 35th birthday when we were staying at the Ritz in Boston that clients had a REALLY fine bottle sent to us at our dinner reservation. Oh, my goodness, what a change! It had no relation to the stuff I knew of before.

LOL Chianti, starrsville. Been there done that. Surprised I didn't have one of those bottles and mandatory candle to unpack from storage this move. :D

It's great that you've been given some suggestions, taylorlane, but I'm not sure why you asked a question about champagne on a TRAVEL forum. I'm sure you'd get better responses on a more appropriate wine/champagne website.

Now where will you be travelling to for your anniversary?

Patrick, re: best you can afford. Well, it depends on what they can afford! I would say once you get near $40 you have a decent chance of getting something good.

Taylor: forgive me if you already know this, but some of the recommendations you have received here are not truely "champagne". Only sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region of France is true Champagne. Everything else is a Sparkling Wine. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But if you really want Champagne....

I like Tattinger, and you can get the Non Vintage (NV-it means they blend grapes from a bunch of different years) at Sam's for about $35. I also like Cristal, which you can get at a wine store for $200 on a good day or a lot more, depending. If you are going to blow a wad, I would suggest researching your selection on wine spectator.com or going to chowhound.com (general topics board) and asking your question there. Often you will see a very expensive bottle of Champagne reviewed poorly in blind tastings. For Example, for several years, Dom Perignon got some crappy reviews, then lately I have seen the Wall STreet Journal reviewers really like it.

It is possible you won't like your first taste of Champagne if you go for a dry, real Champagne, so I personally would not suggest spending over about $40. If you like it, you can always get something pricey for your next anniversary.

Or, you could try the sweeter sparklers that have been suggested. I like Nivole Muscato D'Asti. It's a desert wine in a half bottle, sweetish and flowery with a peach-y aroma and only lightly sparkling. At least in SC, it is very easily found at most wine shops for around $10.

Congrats.

BTW, Asti is not a bad word, just means sparkling, but don't buy Asti Spumanti, at least not the ones commonly available in US grocery stores, ick.

I like Moet & Chandon White Star or Veuve Cliquot.

If you have never had alcohol, don't be surprised or dissapointed if you do not care for it.

As one poster mentioned above, you are asking this question of "travel experts" not wine experts!

Freixenet is not champagne, but sparkling wine, from Spain, I think.

Champagne is from France only, from the Champagne region. There are only 3 types of Grapes used in making champagne and they are: Pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay. Any other sparkling wine beverage is either sparkling wine, or made in the Champagne tradition, but not considered champagne.

You do not have to spend a lot on champagne, in addition to the suze's recommendations another nice choice would be Perrier Jouet. Not only is is a nice champagne, but you can sometimes find it in a gift set, which includes 2 champagne glasses, it will be a nice keepsake as well and will not break the bank.

Hope this helps:)

There is a post in the "Other" message area:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...p;tid=34415962

It's rather long, so I haven't read it, but maybe it answers your questions. At the risk of "wining" I will again encourage you to check out wine discussion boards for wine advice. Happy Anniversary.

ps- found these doing a google on the words: wine discussion forums

http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/

http://www.letstalkwine.com/

http://www.westcoastwine.net/forums/?f=14

http://www.wineweb.com/wineForum.html

I agree with the suggestion you consult a wine shop. Champagne can be anywhere from sweet to bone dry. I prefer the burts which tend to be dry. Vueve Cliquot is always a very good starting point. Our wine club did a blind tasting of champagnes. There were many respectable contenders but a very decent (and 1st place winner) was Tattinger Domaine Carneros which runs $25.

Pol Roger is also a great bottle.

Happy Anniversary!

Annabel is right. I suppose that's why both zootsi and I referenced sparkling wines in our posts. "Champagne" is often used as a generic term in conversation. Another example is when people say they want a Kleenex when they mean tissue. Heck - down here in my neck of the woods we ask "Ya wanna Coke?" And when the answer is yes, we ask "which kind" -meaning do you want a Sprite or root beer or ginger ale? Didn't realize how often we do that until my brother pointed it out on a trip to Montana :-)

Taylor, there are a lot of good suggestions here. I think you will be happier with something a bit sweeter than dry. OJ or cranberry juice as a mixer will help you enjoy the drink if you don't like straight champagne/sparkling wine.

Be sure to have some strawberries on hand. Great with champagne. A nice touch is to dip the strawberries in chocolate. I've served them dipped in both white and dark chocolate - yummy!

Pamsf-You are absolutely right about Tattinger...I forgot about that one. My husband is really into wines and brought it home a few times. He said that it is rated higher than most other champagnes. I agree it tastes better that champagnes 10X it's price.

You've never tried any alcoholic beverage? Didn't you serve champagne at your wedding?

If you don't want to spend too much, Korbel is a nice champagne.

You might like Simple Peach, it's sparkling wine with peach flavor, one of my favs. Also Kritter, which we got one night at the Met Opera, well priced and quite nice.

Also another sparkling wine you might like is Sutter Home White Zinfandel, light a bit sweet and has lots of bubbles.

Chocolate and strawberries are fun with champagne.