In The Press
From Hamptons Cottages & Gardens:
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 July 15-31, 2003 Baroness Sheri de Bourchrave
LA VIE EN ROSE: A life long love affair with Champaign goes pink
Rose Champagne is dry, flavorful, complex and perfectly suited to food and comes in a rainbow of sensuous hues ranging from pink to vermillion, coral, salmon and shimmering copper.
I recently treated myself to a pink bubbly tutorial from Christine Ansbacher, a wine entertainer who conducts novel historical wine dinners. With a collection of seductive bottles before us, we talked styles, tastes and bubbles.
"Roses have so many different personalities," says The Wine Diva, as she's come to be known. "Simply put, there are two distinct styles: the delicate, floral, strawberry style which has vivid fruit flavors and lively acidity; and the medium- to full-bodied bottles with spice, more exotic fruit (figs, passion fruit) and toasty flavors."
The pricier vintage rose, she explained, is made only from grapes from the most exceptional years, while the non-vintage varieties are blends from several harvests. Non vintage bottles, which should be drunk within one to two years of purchase are fresh and accessible and often display a mouth-watering floral style. Vintage bottles are cherished for their yeasty taste and a rich aroma that evolves with age. True connoisseurs know to look for the distinct signs of aging. Over 20 or even 30 years, the aroma moves from fresh baked bread to toast, to brioche and finally to the ultimate, intense biscuity aroma.
A medium-bodied rose Champagne pairs well with pink foods: salmon, runa, lobster and rare lamb. More delicate non-vintage bottles are perfect as an aperitif, she continues.
And the true rose Champagne stars? Dom Perignon Rose '93 is a symphonic wine, Christine explained. "It has a heady complexity with notes of dried fruits - figs and apricots - and is a beautiful coppery pink. Perrier-Jouet '95 Fleur de Champagne Rose has sensuous strawberry flavor from the pinot noir grape with a nose of cinnamon and mimosa."
Champagne's 1996 vintage is often compared to the spectacular 1928 vintage. And indeed the three '96 bottles we had on hand were astonishing. The Diva found "gooseberry, raspberry and woodland scents" in the Veuve Clicquot Rose Reserve. In the Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Rose there were "cherries deepened with scents of earth." And the Bollinger Grand Annee Rose, aged in oak, was a "wonderful blend of pinot noir and chardonnay - a real winner."
The finer and more persistent the bubbles, she explained, the more complex the bouquet. The glorious Bollinger had 56 million of them. How does she know? She knows.
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