Champagne enhances flavor of food

By Micky Fenix

FOR SOMEONE QUITE SHY ABOUT appearing in the company’s brochure, Pierre Emmanuel Taittinger, when asked to pose, proved he knows how to sell his product. He said that it should be better if he had a champagne glass in his hand. But he also liked that he was asked to pose beside the poster that features his daughter, Vitalie, the communications head of the family company. It just so happened that a row of Taittinger champagne bottles were near the poster, which made the photo opportunity even better.

Taittinger Champagne could have been a company without anyone in the family as part of it. In 2005, all the family businesses that included banks, hotels and the champagne house were sold to an American investment company. When the businesses were all separated by the new owners, Pierre Emmanuel Taittinger, with the backing of a bank, bought back Taittinger champagne. There were several offers from different groups from many countries, but he said the bank knew that the Taittinger brand had to have a part of the family. And you could see on his face the pride at having won back what is said to be the third oldest champagne house.

After 10 years, the head of Taittinger was back for a visit. There was a party the night before when Taittinger Champagne must have flowed, but Pierre Emmanuel said that he had no hangover and he thought the guests were okay also. With that, he raised his glass and drank.

Celebrations and champagne go together. Championships have bottles poured or squirted on winning teams, certainly a waste—but it probably isn’t great champagne but cheaper sparkling wine. New boats are launched with it by breaking a bottle on its bow. Toasting partnerships, weddings and other milestones of one’s life all need a fluted glass with tiny bubbles rising to the top.

Food partner

But what Taittinger wanted to assure us that day was that champagne “doesn’t hide the flavors of food.” With that, he asked that lunch be served by the staff of I’m Angus Steakhouse on Yakal Street in Makati. It belongs to the slew of restaurants of Werner Berger, whose Santi’s Delicatessen distributes Taittinger champagnes.

A Brut Reserve nonvintage was served with the appetizers: Duck liver terrine selection, marinated seabass and Atlantic scallop. The soup of cappuccino of lobster bisque was accompanied by the Prestige Rosé nonvintage, which Taittinger said is made from still red wine blended with Chardonnay, which gives the champagne “a beautiful persistent color.” When the perfectly grilled Australian beef medallion was served, it came with the Comtes de Champagne ’99, the exceptional vintage wine made from 100 percent Chardonnay in a differently shaped bottle with the Comtes name more prominent than Taittinger. One connoisseur with us declared that the Comtes we were having was still “young” because it was still acidic in the mouth. We had the Comtes until the trio of sweets.

Throughout lunch historical footnotes were made. Taittinger stated how French king Louis XV liked to have his mistresses drink the bubbly champagne with him—never mind that it was born in monasteries.

He also declared that he drinks champagne daily, but added that he also enjoys pastis (anise-flavored liqueur) either with almond syrup or tomato juice.

Information flowed like his wine that day about the state of the Champagne region, and my pen couldn’t keep up. I had to consult the “Oxford Companion to Wine” edited by Jancis Robinson (Oxford Press, 1994) to make sense of my notes.

Taittinger mentioned how the Champagne region can’t increase the number of hectares (35,000) to produce more wine. The wine encyclopedia says that as a result, the region produces only one bottle in 12 of the total sparkling wines produced in the world. It is Australia and the western United States that have taken to producing sparkling wines. That’s probably why Taittinger went into partnership in California with Le Domaine Carneros, a vineyard between Sonoma and the Napa Valley.

While champagne is a welcome treat, it is more expensive than most of the non-sparkling counterparts. It is also Jancis Robinson who explains why beautifully in her book “Taking Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover” (Penguin Group, 1997): You pay more because of “the sheer depth of flavor that takes years to develop, the way each mouthful lingers in your throat like a comforting, slow-release capsule of explosive warmth, and the fact that it wafts rather than gets up your nose.”

E-mail pinoyfood04@yahoo.com.

Drinking Your Way to Health? Perhaps Not

By Dennis Thompson

Just about every month -- if not every week -- a new study emerges touting the health benefits to be gained from a daily glass of wine or a pint of dark beer.

The benefits related to cardiovascular health have become well-known. A study released in mid-July, for instance, found that moderate alcohol consumption reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease in women by increasing the amount of "good" cholesterol in the bloodstream and reducing blood sugar levels.
But other studies have linked a daily drink, most often wine, to reduced risk of dementia, bone loss and physical disabilities related to old age. Wine also has been found to increase life expectancy and provide potential protection against some forms of cancer, including esophageal cancer and lymphoma.
But don't invest in that case of Pinot noir just yet.
Experts with the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association say that though these studies do show some benefits to moderate drinking, the health risks from alcohol consumption far outweigh the potential rewards.
Drinking any alcohol at all is known to increase your risk for contracting a number of types of cancer, said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society. These include cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon/rectum and breast.
"At the end of the day, if you are at very high risk for cancer, you might want to limit your alcohol consumption even further," Gapstur said. "It's a lifestyle modification you can make, and we don't have as many lifestyle modifications for preventing cancer as we do for coronary heart disease."
There also are other health risks from moderate drinking, including liver damage and accidents caused by impaired reflexes, said Dr. Jennifer Mieres, director of nuclear cardiology at the New York University School of Medicine and an American Heart Association spokeswoman.
The health benefits from drinking generally are related to the antioxidants and anti-inflammatories found in red wines and dark beers, Mieres said, but those substances can be found in a number of different fruits and vegetables.
"When it comes to disease prevention, you're better off changing your diet to include fruits and vegetables and get your antioxidants and anti-inflammatories from natural sources," she said.
For example, people can get resveratrol -- the antioxidant found in red wine that's believed to provide most of the drink's health benefits -- from drinking grape juice just as well as from drinking wine, Mieres said.
"For people that don't drink, not drinking is important," Mieres said. "You can get the same benefits of drinking from leading a heart-healthy lifestyle. To me, it's not worth the risk to start drinking. But for people who enjoy a glass of red wine or enjoy drinking, the key is to stick to the definition of moderation," she said.
Moderate drinking is defined as one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men. What counts as one drink are:

12 ounces of regular beer or wine cooler
8 ounces of malt liquor
5 ounces of wine
1.5 ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits or liquor

Drinking anything more than that on a daily basis is known to lead to a host of health problems that can reduce your life expectancy, Mieres and Gapstur said.

"I think the take-home message is, if you don't drink, don't start to help protect yourself from coronary heart disease because there are so many other things you can do," Gapstur said. "If you already drink, you might want to limit your consumption."
Though the studies touting the positive health effects of alcohol are scientifically accurate, they also appear to play into people's desires for quick fixes to complex problems, Mieres said.

"To prevent heart disease, 50 percent of the work has to come from you," she said. "Prevention is a big piece, and you have to be accountable. You have to make lifestyle changes, and that's very tough to do. People look for easy ways to get heart-healthy benefits, and drinking is an easy way to do that. It's a known human tendency: Let's find an easy way out that doesn't involve a lot of thought or work."