Bubbles and Giggles
May 28, 2012
Whenever I am asked if I can do a wine tasting for a hen night, I'm reminded of an occasion when a very close friend asked me if I could do a beer tasting for his brothers stag do. ‘It will be great’ he said ‘you can dress as a bar wench and we can all play drinking games’. I don’t think he took my profession very seriously at the time. Needless to say I declined on the basis that beer really wasn’t my speciality.
However when I was asked by a current client if I could do something for a hen night recently I sent over some suggestions; introduction to wine tasting, Connolly’s wine challenge and a tasting of sparkling wine and champagne. The girls decided that the sparkling wine and champagne tasting was exactly what they were looking for. So last Saturday this is exactly what we did, I hosted a Champagne and Sparkling wine tasting for a group of very glamorous girls at Ju Ju’s café, beside the canal. We began with tasting two styles of Prosecco; Frizzante and Spumante, the first being lightly sparkling and the second fully sparkling, both really delicious and light. We moved on to white and rose cava from Palau, made by the same method as Champagne and my personal preference, however overall the girls preferred the Prosecco at this point.
During this we also talked about the best way to open sparkling wines and the girls took turns at trying -with varying success, no windows were broken or eyes damaged in the process though. We then moved on to tasting two new world bottles; Pelorus by Cloudy Bay which is such a great alternative to Champagne and the Domaine Carneros which Taittinger had a hand in, also very impressive. The Carnerous is a single vintage so perhaps a little more serious. We finished of with the real thing, the wonderful brut reserve from Gardet and a magnum of Veuve Clicquot, which I challenged the hen with opening. She managed this perfectly, letting out only a small hiss (the angels sigh if you like) and not a pop.
It was a lovely evening, light hearted and a little special and perfect for a hen night. It has to be said whenever bubbles are involved, they are always followed by giggles.
