Veuve with Verve

Silly title, I know.  But sometimes, when it's getting late in the evening, and you've spent the day convincing folks to talk about what you do (yeah, I'm a flack, among other things), and you're on your second glass of Côtes du Rhône, well, you stretch things a little.  But I'm not writing about that.  I'm writing about this:  The magic is working, and the Moveable Feast I've been wishing for is becoming more commonplace here in La-La Land.  Is it the economy?  The weather?  The fact that, as Salon.com claimed a few days ago, celebrity culture is dead? 

I'm not hunting for the reason.  I don't really care.  I only know that, on Christmas night, several handsome men showed up at my door bearing food, wine and holiday cheer, and all I had to do was crank up the tunes and set the table.  (Okay, I did the dishes, but I actually like that part, if you can believe it.  Nothing calms me more after a hard night of hostessing than wrestling the chaos back into the cabinets.)

Now, here's the part where I give props to the Veuve.  Remember that awful holiday party game I wrote about in my last post?  ("It's called 'White Elephant,' said Victor.  Well, that's a mystery solved, isn't it?)  I guess I have to drop my antipathy towards playing it, because it was a major source of my holiday libations this year.  I scored the Fabulous Mr. DeVito's Limoncello.  And Jeffy scored the Veuve Clicquot.  It was the Brut Carte Jaune -- the famous yellow label, serviceably delicious, perfectly suitable for the evening's festivities.

I have to 'fess up to a bit of a soft spot for the Veuve.  We drank it more than a decade ago to celebrate the birth of our daughter, although the occasion was, to us, a little more important than this year's Christmas party.  We feted the arrival of our little rose with a bottle of La Grande Dame Rosé.  The 1995 vintage will set you back 200+ smackeroos at the moment.  (For me, it was worth every penny, and then some.) 

I also love Veuve Clicquot because the Champagne house was founded by a woman--a widow, no less--who launched her career after the combination of a disastrous economy and typhoid (let's hope typhoid doesn't creep into our disastrous economy anytime soon) turned her into an 18th-century entrepreneur.  "Veuve," BTW, means "widow" in French.  Just in case you thought it meant something sexy like "This is wine Diddy would buy at a nightclub," or "If you drink this, George Clooney will kiss you."   To this day, Veuve Clicquot is run by a woman.  The latest president, Cécile Bonnefond, possesses a typically great French haircut.  All French women have great haircuts.  It's apparently a modern trait, however -- as you'll quickly determine once you check out the picture of the original Widow Clicquot on the website.

That's another one of my favorite things about Veuve:  reading the website.  Its fluid French copy just sounds better and better, the more Veuve you consume.  Try it.  Slurp down a couple of glasses and say this:  "Cette année, elle le met une fois de plus au service de Veuve Clicquot, en créant une nouvelle pièce, magnifique : un écrin mystérieux, abritant le champagne La Grande Dame 1998, réinterprété par Andrée Putman avec style, touch & twist." 

Hot, isn't it?  Maybe George Clooney will kiss you, after all. 

There's a new biography out about the Veuve with verve, BTW.  It's called The Widow Clicquot:  The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It.  Even though Christmas is pretty much over, and Amazon has declared their season a success, I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you picked up a post-holiday gift.  Just remember to read it with a coûpe de Champagne, and thank a certain widow who busied herself turning a crystal ceiling into glasses full of star-laced dreams. 

Bonne Année, mes chéries.

Comments

[champagne]

I enjoyed the article. I found it to be very interesting well written and informative. Keep up the great work. You have helped me to learn more about it. Thanks

[Angela Wilson Gyetvan]

Thanks for the props. Glad you like the blog, and we promise that we'll keep drinking and writing!