ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm your host, Kristin. With me, as always, is Greg. Hey. Hey, Roger, you're here too. What's up? I'm excited to be here. Are you? We have a special guest host. We've got Michael Bach. Hey, Michael. Good afternoon. Always a good day for some bubbles. Really happy you're here. So we're doing sparkling wine, of course, for the holidays. We're not gonna leave out the Prosecco and Cava of the world. So really, you know, anyone who listens into the podcast knows that this is right up Roger's alley. Right up Kristin's alley. I don't often drink wine, but when I do, it's sparkling. When I do, it's esoteric wine. Yep. It's either weird fortified wine or sparkling wine. So people ask, what's one style of wine that can kind of get me through the entire holiday season? And the default answer of almost everybody at a Binny's Beverage Depot is gonna be sparkling wine. I mean, it's the most parable. It's the most versatile. Everybody likes it. I mean, Michael, have you ever met somebody who goes, I don't like champagne. No, I haven't. Even if they don't, you pour it for them and they have a smile on their face by the end of the glass. Right. So champagne historically, you know, is meant to represent holidays, festivities, congratulations, celebrations, but also we're kind of like, it's also for tuesday, you know, it's everyday kind of drink, at least in my household. Did you know that last year between November 15th and January 1st, we sold almost half a million bottles of sparkling wine at Binny's? That's incredible. Binny's customers are thirsty. I know. Isn't that cool? That's a lot. Just think about what that would look like stacked up outside in cases. And just silence while we all think. I was picturing how many bottles are opened improperly with corks. Oh my God. Flying across people's eyes. How many people have black eyes in the holidays from... And then by contrast, because we're in a cold climate during the winter, we sold just over 1.2 million bottles of red wine. So, sparkling wine has some work to do. It's really versatile, goes with food, great aperitif. There's always a bottle of sparkling open at home. Before we have a meal, we always pour glasses sparkling so the acidity can stimulate the taste buds and really get you prepared for a meal. Michael Bach, what year was champagne first mentioned in a Christie's Wine Auction? 1797. Very close, 1768. So first mentioned February 1768, really white champagne in 1770, red from champagne in 1778, but the first specific reference to a sparkling wine was 1768. Pretty cool. Champagne was still from champagne until about 1695. So we can date purpose made fizz from 1695 to 1698 in France. But 20 years earlier, we have a primary source from England waxing poetically about how fantastic wine was with bubbles and it was. So they didn't even have it in France. So 20 years earlier, it's all the rage in London already. And this comes down to technology. So the French lost the cork after the Romans. The English did too, but they picked it up about 130 years earlier. And it didn't say why, but I think this is because of their fortified wine game in maritime trade at the time. So right, they're all over Spain, they're all over Portugal, and therein lies the rediscovery of the cork. I'm just inferring that. But also, there was a ban on wood-burning fires to save wood to build ships for their maritime presence, so they had to burn coal. So because of the ban of wood-burning fires, and then the forcefulness of burning coal, the fire burned a lot hotter, so the glass was made even stronger, so it could withstand sparkling wine traditional method production far before the French could do it. So the English are really responsible for purposefully made sparkling wine. We had it as an accident all the way back to Roman times. Stuff was getting magically bubbled all the time, but this is when they first intentionally began to do it. It was an English invention. That kind of flies in the face of the folklore. Oh, big time. Yeah. Well, they say, you know, Don Pyrrhon, you know, invented champagne. Well, he didn't. He spent a lot of his time trying to get the bubbles out, really. So he famously helped with making the cuvee. He was really, you know, important in the vineyard for vineyard hygiene, but he really was integral in the blend of different varieties in champagne. That's interesting. Our first bottle of wine, we've got the El Aubry and Sons, the Nombre Le Nombre d'Or or the Golden Number. This is an example of a Blanc de Blanc, but also a Grower Champagne. Grower champagnes are kind of interesting. So you go back historically, you had these large houses who dominated the landscape of the champagne world. The growers were paid based on a sliding scale. Those with the best fruit, Grand Cru, got paid 100%. Premier Cru got paid less and less down the scale. It became difficult for growers in non-prime vintages to make money. So they said, all right, we're done with this. When they said, we're going to make our own wine, we're not going to just sell all our fruit to you. The large houses still are able to sustain because they have many different sources of fruit, but these growers are now specializing in their own vineyards. So it's a sense of place instead of just a blend of the entire area in terms of a house style. They're also fascinating because it's small production. You've got the same little Frenchmen who tends to the vines to pick the fruit, to vinifies the wine, to putting it in the bottle. Or French woman, I mean. French person. To putting it in the bottle, to turning that bottle one-sixteenth of a turn every day for ten weeks, to getting the yeast down to the end of the bottle, to disgorgement, to putting the label on it, to putting a kiss on the bottle top and sending it But not a French kiss, right? Because that would be gross. That would be gross. A little bit of time. One-sixteenth of a turn a day, that's how you get carpal tunnel. This is true. A million bottles a day. They have a glove for that, right? A special glove. For the people not in the know, can you explain riddling? Yeah. It's what Michael was getting into. Basically, we put champagne through a secondary fermentation in the bottle, and because of that, the yeast cells that are responsible for the conversion and that's what creates the bubbles and the rise in alcohol. About 1.5 percent, those yeast cells die and they sit in the bottom of the bottle and the champagne ages on those dead yeast cells for a number of years. For a non-vintage, it's about a year minimum, but most producers far exceed that by several years. The Bottle of Dom Perignon, for example, will sit on those dead yeast cells called lees for about seven years before it is disgorged. In the 1800s, this goes back to the Cliquot house. So the Vove Cliquot or Widow Cliquot decided to work with her very, very costly, lovely, wonderful, Schefftacov wine maker, a dude by the last name of Mueller. It's really, you know, it's the credit for Riddling is given to the Widow Cliquot, but really it's her German wine maker that came up with it. They're working together and they're figuring out the way to do it. And they come up with Riddling. So Riddling, like Mike said, is turning the bottle ever so slightly to move those lees and concentrate them to the neck of the bottle that then plug that we need to form of the dead yeast cells is frozen. We extract it out. We replace the missing volume of liquid with some reserve wine. This is when we adjust for sweetness to either make it a sweet style or dry. And then we cork it and send it off to Binny's to sell to our Chicagoland neighbors. How many producers would you say are still doing this by hand versus I assume there's mechanized versions of it, right? So producers can do both. For example, if you take the House Rouinar, their normal Blanc de Blanc or their rosé style, that's all going to be done riddling through gyro pellets. So they can do about 525 bottles at a time. All houses use these. They're way more proficient. You can get what a person would take about four weeks to do. Riddling by hand is done in 72 hours because a machine doesn't need to sleep. So you can do it slowly. The rise of the machine. Yeah. But we still like to go back to that old traditional way. So then in the same house, their Dom Rouinar, their Tete Cuvée, those are all done by being hand riddled. So even one house will have a mix of the different ways that it's done. Watching the guys work in the caves in Champagne is super fun, but it makes you, I mean, number one, you have deep respect for them. Two, I don't like to be cold and I don't like to be in the dark. And it's 12 degrees Celsius all the time and it's dark as night. And they're just walking around these maize of caves in the chalk. And it's, I would never do it, no. Fair enough. Yeah. But it's really cool to see. So- Are we going to taste this or what? Yeah, yeah. So here we have this Grower Champagne. You can actually look on a label and you can find what is a Grower Champagne. The tiny little acronym. So you've got NM, which is- Négocie manipulant. And then RM. Récolté manipulant. Those are the two big ones. There are two more, correct? Yeah. CM, which is cooperative. So that's like a Fugate. And then what's the other one? For private label, it's MA. Marc Aschete, it's a private label champagne that they would sell off to a store like ours or whatever. That's their own label. There are actually like seven or eight, legally, but only three you really see. And CM and RM. So RM is your grower champagne. Oh, another question for you, Roger. How many different varieties can they use in the region to make champagne? Three. Good. That's a good answer. Because those are the three most prevalent and most used, but it's actually seven. Seven varieties are permissible in Sparkling Champagne AC. And what's good about this producer is they use those. So they use a little Pinot Blanc, they use a little Pinot Gris, another grape called Petite messelier, and another one called Audubon. these are all white grapes. On top of the usual Charmaine, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier. Yeah. So sometimes this particular bottling will use all seven. sometimes they'll use six, sometimes they'll use spatterings or whatever. They are very famous and it's basically in this particular cuvee that they do use a small proportion of some of those other permissible grapes from Champagne. So pretty cool. How many of the, most of those are white, but there are fewer red? Those other four are white. The two red are Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Okay. The others are white. Were you looking for the blend specifically on this? Yeah, I couldn't get it. It should be 25 Chardonnay, 25 Arbane, 25 Petite Moussier, and the remainder Pinot Blanc. So even split between the four. Which vintage is this? This is the 12th. 2012 Aubry. Nombre d'Or, the golden number. So they're just using more than what the normal Joe, the normal Jean, would use in champagne. Well, it smells world class. So it's pretty cool. So I mean... I mean, really nice. It has a really nice fruit character to it. Yeah, yeah, it's got a nice creamy texture, good acidity, and that fruit would come out even more with food. You know, one thing that salt and fat do, but especially acid in food, is they bring out that round fruity middle palate. I see that it says Brut Natura. That's kind of like a new thing that you're seeing on champagne bottles, because it does have a lower sugar added to it, a lower dosage, but it brings out that acidity and does make it pair much better with food. No sugar added. When you see the Brut Natura, you could see Brut Sauvage, which basically means no sugar in the dosage. They just replace with reserve wine to get up to the 750 ml. The reserve wines, however, it's good to note, can be aged in different ways. For example, if the producer wanted to keep the reserves in oak barrels, then that might add a little bit more of an oxidative note or complexity to the wine via the dosage. For example, Rotor does this very famously with their Hermitage. Wine number two. So, cool place, you can save cash and get a little bit of a taste of champagne is by buying a sparkling wine made in the traditional method, and it's called Cremant, C-R-E-M-A-N-T. It's a good place to, like I said, save some cash. So what we have here is the Louis Bouillot. It is a Cremant de Bourgogne, so it's from Burgundy, just south of Champagne. Pretty cool, they're using two of the same grapes that they use in Champagne. They're primarily using Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. So we're getting a lot of the same fruit structure from a very similar climate, if you will. Little bit in the same way of similar soils, not the same, but still some limestone, still good acidity. And they make it in the traditional method, and they age it for oftentimes a little bit less time. But this guy, where the, sorry, where the Grower Champagne was $74.99 on the shelf, this guy we have for 20 bucks. You know what, it's fun. It doesn't have like the same limestone earth quality and severity that the other one has, but it just smells like a nice little strawberry tart. It's super pleasant, super fruity nose. A little bit of anise or like herbal. It doesn't smell candied. You know what I mean? Yeah. does this get its color from the dosage or from the skins or? So it's very common to make these sparkling rosés, either with Sagne method, which means they bleed a little bit of the rosé right off the skins. That generally will lend itself to more of a true pinot noir, just 100 percent sometimes, and then oftentimes they can blend it. Now, this is the only time in the European Union where one can blend a white and red wine is when they make a style like this. There's nothing wrong with this. How many bubbles are in a 750 milliliter bottle of champagne? They found out. Really? Yeah. It's got to be, I don't know, almost a billion. Two million. Michael? 1.5 million. It is 49 million individual bubbles. Who was the closest without going over? So rosés are all the rage now, but in France, correct me if I'm wrong, it was always kind of a celebratory champagne? I think so because I think that's kind of how it started, because it was really hard to ripen red grapes properly to get a lot of color, get any kind of red fruit flavor out of it. So I think that that was sort of the impetus of the premium price of rosé champagnes from the champagne region. But yeah, I think that now it's just become more of a novelty, I think. So Kristin, as you open the next bottle of sparkling, could you explain a little bit on the proper way to do that? Well, certainly, but I think I'm going to do you one better, Roger. I've actually filmed a video of the proper way to open sparkling wine, and we're going to add a link at binnys.com/blog. So go ahead and check it out. You'll see how to make sure it's a little bit more fun, a little bit less shoot your eye out, right, Greg? Exactly. Okay. So find us there. So I'll show you there, Roger. Great. So pouring now, we've got the Schramsberg. Schramsberg is an iconic producer out of California. So let me ask, what year was Schramsberg founded, Michael Bach? What year? It's a tough one, but I'm going to say 1965. Close, 1862 player. And then we had a few bad things happen. You can probably guess, you know, two world wars, right? Prohibition. And so obviously there's a break, but then we had a family come in, the davies, they came back in the 1960s and they took and they rebuilt and restored the 1862 winery from Jacob Tram. That's where they got Tramsburg the name. And they decided to turn it into the hub of quality sparkling wine for California. And they did that. And their first wine that they released is the one that I poured for you, Raj. It's the Blanc de Blanc. So that was their first cuvee, I believe, in 1968. Now what's cool about that is in the 70s, it became famous. It was served at a state dinner in China, very famously by president Nixon, and has been served for state functions in the White House every single year for every single president since that time. I mean, Schramsberg is, it's pretty interesting. They're not located in Canaros by a lot of the other ones. They are at the north end of Napa. It's a beautiful winery. They do have, you know, they've got, I was there last year and they had almost a mile and a half of underground caves, all full of bottles, just waiting for those two years before they can disgorge them and sell them to us. They source from Napa and also Sonoma, where it's cooler. So they do get a little bit more structured, cool climate fruit, similarly ripened to places you might find like Champagne or Burgundy. So Blanc de Blanc, 100% Chardonnay. So when you guys see Blanc de Blanc on a label, know it's made of all white grapes. We have the, remember the Grower's Champagne, the Aubry here was also Blanc de Blanc, but they're using Pinot Blanc, et cetera, et cetera, Arbonne. So as long as they use white grapes, they can call it Blanc de Blanc. A Blanc de Noir then is a white wine of black grapes. Do you like this wine, Roger? Yeah, it seems almost a little more effervescent than the others. Is that imagined or does that vary from sparkling? Well, it would be more than the Aubry for sure. That's a little bit softer by about maybe an atmosphere too, I believe. And so these guys can be about six, they can be in the Champagne region, they can be anywhere between five and six atmospheres. So six atmospheres, think about that as like a semi-truck tire. It's about 90 pounds per square inch. That's a crazy amount of pressure. So you can do a little bit less. If you did one atmosphere, I think your palate's so sensitive and tuned to the bubbles after years of tasting that you would be a person that would probably feel that. And it gets less aggressive the longer you age it. So in the case of a vintage Champagne, that kind of persistent bubbly structure is going to go down more and more the longer the Champagne ages, the bubbles will become smaller, there will become less of them. Do you know the word, Roger, that we use to refer to the bubbles on the palate? There's a name for it. I feel like I do. Yeah. You're hanging out with me for 58 episodes, Claire. And it's gonna escape me. I also put it in my hair this morning. They also make it in chocolate. It's not a elk, it's not a deer. Moose? Yeah, all right, that's awesome. So when people taste bubbles, I think that they fail to take into consideration the size of the bubbles, because if you taste, let's say we're gonna taste a Prosecco a little bit later, you'll notice those bubbles are gonna be larger. When you drink too much at a time to taste, I get the chipmunk cheeks a lot, you know, that kind of can come from the size of bubbles, but also you can feel the pressure on your tongue, and that just comes with time. So get a bottle of Fizz that's made in different methods of production. After all, the style of bubbles is defined by which method the CO2 becomes trapped inside the bottle. That is gonna directly affect the way that the moose feels on the palate. I like the Schramsberg a lot. I think it's more forgiving, more fruit forward, a little softer in terms of like sugar and acidity. And that would be dynamite with all the Thanksgiving trimmings or a little bit of chocolate or something. I like it because it's softer. It has less acid, especially if you're having a lot of high cholesterol foods, right? Lots of sugar during the holidays. High cholesterol foods? High cholesterol. Sh** that's gonna cause acid reflux and stuff, lots of acid and like stuff that people that have that issue. And you want to drink sparkling wine, this particular style has softer acidity. It'll be a little bit less bothersome. That's one of the things that keeps me from loving champagne, is after too much of it, I just, it starts to hurt. Yeah, right. So I think that this and a few other styles around the world, you'll notice offer that softer acidity. I like that you bring up Thanksgiving because the effervescence of these can be really good at such a rich, decadent meal. It's a nice palate scrubber. And especially if you have one of those families where you have Thanksgiving with this set of grandparents at noon and then you gotta bring the kids to this aunt's house at three and you're eating a lot of different stuff. This particular kind of wine keeps you refreshed. You can have a glass with every meal. You're not gonna feel heavy. If you're drinking Chateauneuf de Pop at noon, I don't know about you guys, it's cool while it's happening, but an hour later, I'm like, nap time. So this keeps you going and keeps you lively. And of course, it's lower in alcohol too. I mean, most red wines at this point are 14, 15% alcohol. whites now are trending upward. Sparkling really never gets above 12, 12.5% alcohol. That's a great point. So you can drink it all day. This is my showstopper bottle I brought in today. I kind of like come into the party with something cool. It kind of looks a little Game of thrones-ish. And it has like a- Judas priest and- Some kind of- Going to Thanksgiving and Aunt Susan's- Pewter horseshoe on the bottom of it. This is covering a couple of different categories for us. Number one, it's Kava. And it's Segura Viudas, the Heredad bottling. And for those of you who will take a look at our website and check out the bottle itself, it's pretty cool. It's got this kind of metal emblem on the front and the bottom is held by a, I guess, a metal base that has the name of the producer and some grapes etched in it. It's kind of, you know, looks like an ancient freeze. The punt is tremendous. It's like having grapefruit. Yeah, it's super cool. So I bring that in. I get it in Magnum generally for New Year's Eve. And for some reason, my friends are living in the United states of amnesia. Like they never remember that that's literally the same Kava that I brought last year. They love it. So especially Magnum, it's, you know, 1.5 liters. It's a big, big, generous bottle. It's cool. But go ahead and taste the wine. So Kava comes from Spain. It's a non-contiguous DO, so it means it's a non-contiguous region, but the majority comes from the area kind of around Barcelona. So Kava is Catalan for cave. That's where the name came from. It's pretty good. It's, it's broad and spicy, you know. It's very citrusy. It has a citrus component that this almost is like halfway there to a champagne cocktail right out of the bottle. It's delicious. But can you see how it's less fruity? Yeah. Like kind of bruised banana if there's a fruit quality. Yep. Bruised banana. There's a, yeah, there's just an earthy quality to it. A little bit of that kind of, that classic kind of rubber. I know it might sound weird, but it actually is very complimentary. Rubber or the kind of like a band-aid note, which is... Mr. Buck, I sense that you're taking a pass on this one. This one's not your favorite in the lineup. Oh, wine has a time and a place. Yeah. There is no right or wrong. That's why I don't like it though. Correct. Correct occasion. You know, I think it's cava. You know, cava tends to be a little bit more playful, less serious, so it's just about enjoying. You know, the champagne was lean and mineral. Even the Schramsberg was a little bit more dressed up in a shirt and tie. This is just, you know, I've got shorts and flip-flops on, and I'm just going to enjoy life. I agree with what you're saying, though, that this makes an impression. I've brought this places, and people really enjoy the bottle. I also think it pairs well with food in a way that it kind of reminds me of some drier cherries, has some similar. So I could see this being an interesting thing to throw in. If you were doing like small plates, like little tapas kind of things, this would slide in right there. Yep, with seafood as well. Yeah, big time. I want more acidity on seafood. Yeah. No, you're right, though. That'd be delicious with seafood. Especially sometimes you can put seafood in different sort of sauces and broths. And I find that this really pairs well with that. Like the butter part of it. The savory and the butter and the fat. It really kind of brings out more of the fruit. What's cool about cava is, you know, normal producers are using a lot of their own indigenous varieties and really kind of just, you know, follow in the coattails of the champagne style. Michael Bach, what are the three most common grape varieties in cava? My pronunciation may not be correct, but Jarlo Macabeo and Parallada. Good job. I think that pronunciation was fantastic. But there are now, there's kind of like this new guard that they are planning the traditional champagne grapes. Chardonnay is kind of the biggest one. And it's interesting, it's kind of changing the face of cava. They're also taking down the dosage or the sugar level and making more extra brutes. provides a little bit more kind of a mineral backbone to it. They've become just a little bit leaner. So it's kind of, it's an interesting new category for cava. They're not expensive, you can kind of see a different face of the potential of cava moving forward. When they make rosé, they could use pinot noir, they could use garnacha, monastrel, or their indigenous trepate, which I always forget that great. So obscure and weird, you know, but. What is it? Trepate. It's just for cava production, just for their rosé primarily. One word to the wise, if you do buy this distinctive bottle, do not chill it in your freezer. I have seen one explode. That decorative ring contracts and the bottle can blow up. Man. Keep it in the fridge. So that's terrifying. Yeah. All right, what do we have next? So you have two different wines poured here, Roger. What's the one thing you notice right away when you look at them? This first one is super pale. Yeah. So the Prosecco here on the left is a Fossetta Prosecco. It's $10.99 on the shelf. I like this. Good quality Prosecco. Notice how we've got in the right, then, a Bollinger, their special cuvee. That is $59.99, actually on sale right now, for $49.99. Let's get back to the color, right? You notice the two. This comes from age. This Bollinger spent probably a few years on the lees, under Crown Cap, in a cold cellar, and white wines gain color with age. It takes tiny, tiny bits of oxygen through the Crown Cap or through the cork. They age their reserve wines at Bollinger, either in barrel, so they're the last champagne house to have their own Cooper on site, and they age all their reserves in magnums. The smaller the vessel in which you age, the faster the wine will age, so the faster it's going to gain color. So, champagnes are this golden color because they're aged for so many years. Prosecco's are virtually not aged. They're made in the Charmat or tank method, and after secondary fermentation is done in bulk in a tank, they sit there for about 30 days to let the dosage integrate, then they bottle under pressure, and they send off to you. So, there's no aging. So, you can see that it's basically a super pale, almost clear lemon color. But when you smell it, super expressive, very, very pronounced aromatics. It's about being young, being fresh, being lively. Super floral. It's really cool. Reminds me of you instantly think of, like, warm weather. Right. So during the holidays when it's cold, we'll bring you back to the warmth. It's a little bit of Irish spring in there. What are those Irish spring commercials? Fruity salts. But, I mean, there's like a little bit of herbal quality and floral. Oh, more than a little bit. Some lavender all over the place on top of pears. I think it's where people would think it's too much, but if you embrace it, it's really neat. sometimes when you give wine descriptors, people might struggle with them, might have to have a more professional palette. I guess. We're in a unique situation where we try stuff literally on a daily basis. You could pour this for someone and say it's floral, they're going to taste it. Yeah, they're going to get it. fresh. What do you say? It's youthful and vibrant. Youthful, vibrant, citrus, awakening. I like the floral component. I think in terms of fruit, though, there's a lot of honeydew melon here, a little bit of peach, honeysuckle, those classic. But if you notice, it's not super sweet. It's fruitier than the other wines we're tasting today. It is a little bit sweeter, but I wouldn't ever describe this particular Prosecco as a sweet wine. So I find it to be a little bit rounder, a little bit less acidic, so it's softer. Just kind of like our Schramsberg example. Yeah, it's very good. If you make your French 75s with gin, the Nouveau way, as opposed to Cognac, this would be awesome for that, I bet. Kind of candied. I didn't think this was a good pairing to have these two wines side by side, but it really brings out the differences in these two different worlds. Yeah, so collect wines that are made in different ways and taste them side by side so you understand traditional method, tank method, and so on and so forth. I would say this Prosecco is a great example of that. You can celebrate sparkling wine every day. Can we taste the Bollinger now? Because it's pretty rad. Take us through. Go for it. No, I'm good. Okay, well, I mean, the fact that it's aged in wood is clearly shown, but it's not like oppressively woody. It definitely has this old world earthy quality on top of the fruit. And this would be an amazing pairing with truffles. Right. When you talk about the wood program at Bollinger, of which they're so famous for, it's not a lot of new barrels here. I mean, some of these are century plus years old. Like, they don't impart any of that new oak flavor to the wine. It's all about oxidation. Like a little bit of spice and then that baked pineapple quality. yes. yes. I like the baked pineapple. That's good. I love this wine. I always have. I love you. I always have. I mean, it's fascinating because you look at the two ends of the spectrum. You look at the grower's champagne. You know, it's where it's that one French person who's, you know, doing everything to minute detail. And then you have the complete opposite end of the spectrum. And how are they able to do it in such a grand scale? So both ends of the spectrum are equally admirable because of the effort work that it takes on both sides. I think we need it. We need simple $10 sparkling wine. It doesn't mean it's better or worse. I'll drink the heck out of it, you know? It just has its different place. Cool. So drink the American wines on Thanksgiving. I just think, why not? Because we make some really killer stuff here in this country. And drink champagne on New Year's. And drink champagne on New Year's. You know, but sparkling wines out of Oregon, especially, are killer. They're really doing well. So check out some of our friends up in Oregon who are making really good stuff. Well, folks, that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Write your questions to us via email, comments at binnys.com, or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev, on the social medium of your choice, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Craigslist. Our question this week comes from at AJ8Will. What's a crowd pleasing red to serve at Friendsgiving? How about from our wine sales team represented in the room? I think the easy answer is Domaine La Roque. Domaine La Roque is a tasty user-friendly bottle of un-oaked Cab Franc from the South of France. Beautiful red raspberry, black raspberry fruit. Super suave in terms of tannin. It has never met a person that it has not liked. It's like 10 bucks, right? It's $10. Yeah. And it's a cult classic at Binny's. I like Oregon Purnamore. That's my jam. That's easy enough, yeah. Kelly Fox, Patricia Green. Montezumi. Yeah. I mean, I can go on. Soder. I'm going to suggest something from the rhone. I think that Grenache Syrah. yes. It's classic. Well, and the joke amongst wine geeks is always, you bring Cote de Rhone for the table, and the Chateauneuf de Pape is under the table at your feet. That was my wedding, literally. So, so at AJ8Will, don't forget to get something your friends like. That's the point of friends giving. There's a $20 Binny's gift card coming to you for writing us your question. Everybody else can email us, commentsatbinnys.com. Hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bell on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Cool. I hope that we sorted out people for Fizz for the holidays. Yeah. Wine is fantastic. Don't take it too seriously. Enjoy bubbles every day. Let it have a place on your table and in your glass. Don't put it away for a special occasion. Every day is a special occasion with sparkling wine. Couple of things to remember. Make sure to serve sparkling wine cold. If the bottle is open, when you pop that cork, it's going to come flying out. So you want to chill down that bottle to enjoy it better, but also to make sure that you decrease the pressure so you don't hurt anybody when you open it. And two, for those people who are cleaning glasses in between courses, if you don't rinse out the detergent in the glass, detergent kills soap, kills bubbles. Oh yeah, don't use soap in your glass. So yeah, so make sure to rinse it very, very well with hot water to make sure that you don't kill the bubbles because then you're going to be wondering why your Bollinger Special Cuvee doesn't bubble anymore. Right. Get a champagne stopper. A sparkling wine stopper is your best friend. We keep bottles at home in the fridge for up to a week and the bottles are just fine. You don't have to finish it upon opening. Yeah, you don't have to wait for a special occasion like Thanksgiving or whatever to drink champagne. Like we said, being awake, being alive is good enough for a reason. Another day above ground is a good day to drink champagne. Folks, thanks for tuning in to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm your host, Kristin. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Michael. Keep tasting. I always go for a glass of Fizz. Or a bottle. Shh, my mom's listening. What the hell was that? Is that your watch? What's the reminder? 1 p.m., send people to lunch. What are they going to do without you? Oh my gosh, they're going to starve. They'll survive.