This time, I’m looking at the wine of one of my favourite comfort food pairings: Grilled cheese and cheap champagne. Preferably drunk out of a mug. The champagne doesn’t need to be cheap, mind. But when I’m in the mood for this sort of pairing, the cheaper stuff works just fine. If you are British, you can use a cheese toastie. There are certain technical differences (at least in my mind) between grilled cheese and a toastie, but that’s a post for another day.
In the glass, or in this case, the small mug: it’s a light, clean wine. Relatively small bubbles. I can’t quite decide if I should call it pale lemon, or perhaps try to sound a bit more sophisticated and go with something like ‘straw.’
Sounds: Keeping with a previous post, I listened to this one. The best I can say is that it glugs when you pour it. I wasn’t particularly careful pouring it, but I wasn’t completely irresponsible either. Full disclosure: I was slightly irresponsible. In trying to listen to the wine whilst pouring it, I managed to pour some onto the tablecloth as well. It still sounded the same coming out of the bottle, though.
Once in the glass it sounded, like, well, a carbonated drink. Perhaps not quite as energetic as a sparkling water, but if you are familiar with the prickelnd sort of sparkling water, that would work as a comparison. Prickelnd being lightly sparkling, as opposed to full-on fizzy water. (Or at least, that’s my experience, although perhaps those with vaster knowledge of such things will tell me I’m wrong.)
The nose is prickly. You know, the sort of sensation you get when you stick your snout over a glass of something fizzy, as it fizzes. Other than that, I get nothing. No aromas whatsoever. TY suggests slight apple on the nose, but not very pronounced.
The palate. It’s light bodied, sharp, acidic and not entirely pleasant to my taste. It’s prickly. (Yes, I keep using that word. It does indeed mean what I think it means.) More reminiscent of carbonated water than many champagnes, I scrawled when tasting it.
The champagne has a very short finish. There are green apples, and apple skins for taste. Perhaps a bit of citrus. TY thinks maybe greengages or gooseberries. I’m not so sure. It improves on lingering in the mouth. When I just take a sip, and swallow fairly quickly, I’m left with a slightly bitter finish, which is quite short. But if you just let it sit in your mouth, the champagne reveals its more rustic charms. That’s probably the best description I can give of it – it’s a rustic version of champagne. It’s not particularly refined. It probably can’t waltz, and probably doesn’t know the quadrille. But that’s fine. Neither do I.
Rating: I’m going to go with yummy on this one. If I were going by what my wine industry training tried to instil in me, I’d probably give a yummy(minus). But there’s more to life than the technical aspects of a wine, and sometimes cheap fizz just goes really well with grilled cheese. It’s definitely a ‘not-serious food wine’ according to my notes.
Sustainability: Don’t have anything, but to be honest, I’d be very surprised to find a budget champagne was organic, or farmed sustainability, or any such things.
Other stuff: The mugs are definitely called for in this situation. They are the crux of the whole dinner, actually. They are small, 250ml ‘wine mugs.’ They are a type traditionally used in Austrian heurige, and similar wine taverns. Sometimes I’ll drink wine out of the ones I have, but most often, they are brought out, as they were on this occasion, for grilled cheese and champagne in a mug.
The technical info and such: 12.5% Aldi. (Specific blend of grapes is not provided.) About £12, although I’ll try to remember to check the price next time, and edit this if I remember.