We love Champagne

A Champagne gift that should make everyone happy!

WineGifts4U launched engraved magnum champagne as an addition to its increasing portfolio of gifts.

As each year passes by, it becomes harder and harder to find the perfect birthday gift, wedding anniversary gift and even Christmas present for all those people in your life. There are many companies both in the UK and internationally that offer personalized gifts in order to give you the ability to find really special presents for friends and loved ones.

WineGifts4U does just that and they have recently added engraved bottles of magnum champagne to the collection of gifts allowing you the consumer to find and give truly special gifts at every special occasion.

How come Champagne gives us headaches?

Congeners are impurities which form during the fermentation process. All alcoholic beverages contain congeners to some degree, including one called acetaldehyde, responsible for headaches when drinking alcohol. The traditional process of making champagne involves two fermentations; the first fermentation converts grape juice into still wine and the second fermentation happens in the bottle and produces the bubbles, and produces additional acetaldehyde.

We tested the acetaldehyde levels of some popular brands using testing apparatus, and here’s what we found:
Brand/Acetaldehyde Level (mg/L):
Moet & Chandon White Star/45
Perrier Jouet Champagne Grand Brut/53
Piper-Heidsieck Brut Champagne/47

Americans came up with an alternative to this, the Floot.

The Floot process creates an effervescent (bubbly) wine without the additional acetaldehyde by modifying the traditional champagne making method. They start with a blend of high quality white wines and infuse the effervescence, which results in a much lower acetaldehyde level.

It may be refreshing and taste good but it will never be Champagne though!

The Third Mumm Explorer Experience: An extraordinary meal to celebrate the world’s beauty

Australia, Queensland, Great Barrier Reef, Undine Cay, 14th of July 2009 – Bastille Day

The first journey took them to Greenland and featured a dinner orchestrated by Michelin two-star chef Sylvestre Wahid on an iceberg drifting in the middle of Sermilik Fjord. The second Mumm Explorer Experience led them to Antarctica, to the very same spot where Commander Charcot spent the winter in 1904 (Charcot Bay) with a dinner by former Michelin three-star chef Gérard Boyer. This time, G.H Mumm chose the Great Barrier Reef, and asked Mauro Colagreco (voted best chef in 2009 by France's influential Gault Millau guide) to prepare a gastronomic lunch right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on a pristine sandbank on the Great Barrier Reef.

Mauro Colagreco, the Chef at the Mirazur (Menton, France), trained under Bernard Loiseau, Alain Passard and Alain Ducasse. Like his peers who prepared the first two meals, he used local produce for his amazing menu – which featured prawns with caviar lemon, seared ormers with sesame sauce and tomato preserve, seared baramundi on papaya and green mango with citrus fruit, and, as the finishing touch, tapioca with lait coc, corosole and longuent

The idea behind these out-of-the-ordinary meals in exceptional spots is to trigger an exchange. In this case, it is an exchange between a chef who has built an outstanding reputation on account of his inventive cuisine, a magical spot and the wealth of flavours its local produce can unleash. Magnifying these resources in their natural setting, in a nutshell, was the challenge that Mauro Colagreco had to rise to.

Preparing a gourmet meal on an iceberg or sandbank can sound awkward, but it is really only a technical challenge until the chef finds his bearings again. Here, however, he is alone with his stove and delivering what musicians would call an “unplugged” live performance. There are no special effects: just unspoilt landscapes – and the looming threat of climate change.

The main new feature in this third Mumm Explorer Experience, however, was that G.H Mumm announced ten lucky winners would have the exclusive opportunity to participate in the fourth Mumm Explorer experience, slated for July 2010 in the Gobi desert – provided they won the contest that this Maison de Champagne will be running this September.

Champagne value

Champagne re-selling is a much smaller business than wines selling. Still, what a true collector will look for in a top vintage Champagne is where it comes from, how it’s been stored since the time of purchase and so on.