Tag Archives: Cremant

New Year Sparkling Wine: Champagne vs Cremant de Limoux and Loire

And so it ends not with a whimper but a bang. We cannot leave Paris without cracking a few more bottles of bubbly. No 191 day EU Austerity Drinking Tour could finish France without value Cremant or Champagne.

For a mere €15.00 we find true, actual, not Prosecco, Champagne from Champagne, France (specifically the village of Buxeuil in the region’s southern extreme). Grower André Diligent et Fils created this Brut: Continue reading

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Strasbourg Part 2: Historic Wine Cave beneath a Hospice: Cremant and Pinot Gris Grand Cru

Last Monday’s EU Austerity Drinking Tour landed us in Strasbourg’s Christmas markets, on top of its Cathedral, and enjoying its wine. Today, we descend into the caves of the Hospice de Strasbourg.

As with our visit, not ten days prior, to Burgundy’s Hospice de Beaune, we find Strasbourg had its own, even older medical, religious, wine cellar. Since 1395, cellars beneath the city’s hospital provided wine as medicine and sacrament. Like Beaune, this hospice gained vine-land from guilty proprietors bent on heaven. Although wine-making stalled during the last century, it reformed as a cooperative in 1995. Let’s see what survived the centuries. Continue reading

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