Category: Europe
Festive Fizz: Champagne for the Holidays
There’s nothing like the Pavlovian pop of a champagne cork to put you in the holiday spirit. It’s like the starting gun for a season of celebration, from the office Christmas party—where you sneak a kiss with your work crush, emerging from the supplies cupboard peeling sticky notes from unlikely places—to New Year’s Eve, when you slip on your glitziest glad rags and reach for the classiest of accessories: a chilled flute of champers.
But with supermarket shelves literally overflowing with fizz at this time of year, you might feel a headache coming on simply deciding on a bottle. This year, old St. Nick himself offers a few inspired solutions to your bubble troubles.
I refer not to Santa Claus—although with those red cheeks, I suspect the jolly old elf knows a thing or two about the subject. No, my friends, I speak of Nicolas Feuillatte, the number one best-selling champagne brand in France and third around the world.
Here are two elegant options from Nicolas Feuillatte’s new 2018 Festive Gift Range. (more…)
Vina Pomal: Rioja That Comes In With a Roar
You know it’s going to be a great evening when you walk into a room that’s glittering with more glassware than a Waterford Crystal showroom. This was the scene this week at Hispania, an elegant, two-story Spanish bar and restaurant just a short stumble from Bank tube station in London’s financial district.
Hispania restaurant, Vina Pomal event. @MariedeChesse
Large round linen-draped tables were topped by a continuous ring of wineglasses—at least five per place-setting—as if the hosts expected a tangle of parched octopuses to rock up, eagerly grasping a glass with each tentacle. In fact, the group that actually filtered through Hispania’s doors–a gaggle of guzzling journos, me among them–would prove a far graver threat to the wine stocks before the night was done.
Thank goodness for the name card. After all those glasses had been filled–and emptied–I thought I might need a reminder.
But a liberal appreciation of the libations was only to be expected, as this was a celebration, a christening for a very special new arrival. Tonight, the just-launched 2015 Vina Pomal Compromiso classic Rioja would be feted alongside a host of its brethren wines at a five-course feast prepared by Michelin starred chefs Mario Sandoval and Marcos Moran. (more…)
Ghoulish Good Times: London Halloween 2018
From hair-raising tours of haunted palaces to creepy cabaret, fiendish fancy dress parties, and a spook”tea”cular take on England’s decadent afternoon delight, here’s a list of fang-tastic places to get your ghoul on around London this autumn.