How To Walk In High Heels: The Girl's Guide To Everything (23 page)

White wine is blonde, Nordic, light and flirty. It is Marilyn Monroe, Gwen Stefani, Gwyneth Paltrow. It is Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein shift evening dresses, Jil Sander white shirts or bias-cut Galliano. It is mink fur stoles and diamond earrings, well-groomed luxury. Think cream cashmere polo necks, Chanel’s Allure perfume, and crocodile slingbacks. Alternatively, works well with your Juicy Couture tracksuit, a face pack and a brat-pack-movie night in with the girls.

This is a variety of grape, as well as the name of a basic wine. The name Chardonnay has been so overused it is easy to get confused and conned into purchasing something not up to standard. There are different levels of wine, from expensive and specialist Chardonnays to the more user-friendly Chablis, that use the Chardonnay grape.

Chardonnay is one of the most widely planted wine-bearing vines in the world. The Chardonnay grapevine is suited to a variety of soils, though it excels where there is a high limestone content, as found in Champagne, Chablis and the Côte d’Or. Burgundy is Chardonnay’s spiritual home and the best white Burgundies are dry, rich, honeyed wines with poise, elegance and balance; unquestionably the finest dry white wines in the world. The Chardonnay grape is the mainstay of white wine production in California and Australia, and is widely planted in Chile, and South Africa and New Zealand. In warm climates Chardonnay has a tendency to develop very high sugar levels during the final stages of ripening and this can occur at the expense of acidity.

Top Chardonnays include Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, Chassagne-Montrachet.

This is an important white grape in Bordeaux and the Loire Valley that has now found fame and success in New Zealand and Chile. It thrives on the gravelly soils of Bordeaux and is blended with Sémillon to produce fresh, dry, crisp AC Bordeaux Blancs, as well as the more prestigious Cru Classé White Graves. When blended with Sémillon, though in lower proportions, it produces the great sweet wines of Sauternes. It performs particularly well on the chalky soils found in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, where it produces bone-dry, highly aromatic, racy wines, with grassy and sometimes smoky, gunflint-like nuances. In the 1980s Cloudy Bay, New Zealand, began producing stunning Sauvignon Blanc wines with extraordinarily intense nettly, gooseberry, and even asparagus notes, that put Marlborough’s Cloudy Bay firmly on the world wine map.

A first-class grape variety grown in Alsace, where it is known as Tokay Pinot Gris, and in Italy, where it is called Pinot Grigio, so it is possible to get confused. In Alsace it is best suited to the deep, clay-rich soils found in the north of the region where it produces honeyed, dry whites. It ages very well, developing buttery characteristics. In northern Italy Pinot Grigio is widely planted, producing many thin, undistinguished dry whites. However, it comes into its own in Friuli where leading producers such as Alvaro Pecorari produce marvellously rounded examples.

Whites from southern France, Australia, California are also worth perusing.

Rosé wine

Rosé is, as its name implies, for in the pinks and best saved for Champagnes. Try the Billecart Brut Rosé Salmon for the ultimate pink fizz.

Rosé is basically when red grapes are fed through a crusher and straight into a vat, complete with their skins, before the wine is run off to ferment. It is the skins that produce the pinky-hued colour. Rosé is usually dry as it is allowed to complete fermentation naturally.

Mateus Rosé and Casal Mendes Rosé, from Portugal, Lacheteau Rosé d’Anjou and Domaine de Pellehaut Rosé are four of the best bottles to try.

How to love Champagne

‘I only drink champagne when I’m happy, and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it – unless I am thirsty’
Lily Bollinger
, on being born into the right family

Drink with diamonds, furs, and above all high heels and glamour. Best served in elegant, long, chilled, crystal glass flutes. The perfect accompaniment to strawberries and marriage proposals.

Champagne is a place in France. Only Champagne from Champagne is Champagne. The rest are fakes. The three principal regions in the Champagne area are the Montagne de Reims, the Côte des Blancs and the Vallée de la Marne.

Champagne is made from a blend of three possible grape varieties. Black grapes Pinot Noir for richness, and Pinot Meunier for a fruity hint of spice, and Chardonnay, a white grape, for the delicate fresh quality.

The legend is that there was a blind French monk, called Dom Pierre Pérignon, who stumbled onto a cask, and when he tasted the bubbly exclaimed, ‘I am drinking the stars.’ It is not said how much he had drunk when this statement was made, but suffice to say he loved the stuff.

As with wine there’s a lot of variety and you need to decide which is best suited to your palate. Do you like a soft bubble, something fruity, something light, or whatever is offered?

WARNING: wine with bubbles goes to the head faster. Studies show that the carbon dioxide in the bubbles speeds the alcohol through the stomach wall and into your bloodstream that little bit faster. So if you’re in a hurry into oblivion, order some bubbly.

The best Champagne houses

Founded in 1829 and still in the family. Think Edina and Patsy in
Ab Fab
swigging from the bottle.

Founded in 1832. Motto: Go forward one step at a time. For a classy Savile Row-wearing, connoisseur drinker.

Part of the Moët et Chandon Champagne house. Named after a famous monk who was the most important early influence in turning Champagne into the sparkling wine we know today. Hallelujah. Now served up at Ascot and Society bashes.

Founded in 1843 by Jean-Joseph Krug, this house has always put quality first and so attracts a very high-quality customer. This is for the Cartier watch-wearing, polo-playing gang.

Founded in 1760 and one of the oldest Champagne houses. The Black Label brand is one of the best sellers in the UK and is ideal for baby showers and Bar Mitzvahs.

Founded in 1812, and the largest independent, family-owned Grande Marque house in Champagne. This is for toasting when your boat comes in or when you win at the races.

Renowned for high quality, this is the great Cristal Champagne, which was first made for the Tsar of Russia and his court. For swooning under the chandeliers and being very Merchant Ivory and period drama decadent with. Think
Gosford Park
chic.

Founded in 1858, now part of the giant LVMH* group. Their Champagnes have a reputation for good value so ideal for eighteenth and twenty-first birthday parties.

Founded in 1743 and based in Epernay. Napoleon favoured Moët and visited their cellars. This is the largest Champagne house and is owned by the LVMH group. This is drunk at fashion shows and flashy events, usually by very thin models.

Founded in 1827, a large house whose flagship brand is Cordon Rouge. This is the best stuff for weddings and bathing in.

Made famous in the 1920s for supplying Maxim’s in Paris and is still the choice du jour for flappers and gangsters’ molls.

Founded in 1772 and responsible for building this brand into one of the Grandes Marques; now owned by LVMH. This is the bubbly for political and high-brow occasions.

*
LVMH

(Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) is the French luxury-goods group, owned by Bernard Arnault, that constitutes over fifty brands, including Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, Dior and Fendi and also has considerable clout in the wine and spirit industry. They own the following wine and spirit brands: Moët et Chandon, Dom Pérignon, Veuve Clicquot, Krug, Mercier, Ruinart, Château d’Yquem, Chandon Estates, Hennessy, Cloudy Bay, Cape Mentelle, Newton, MountAdam.

How to taste wine like a professional

‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she walks into mine’
Rick Blaine
(
Humphrey Bogart
), in
Casablanca

Drinking is easy – tasting is different. Tasting involves and engages all your senses so you can detect every subtlety within the wine.

Does it look clear or dull? Any murk and it’s got to go back.

White wine should sparkle, it should be white – lemon – gold. White wine gets more golden and deeper with age.

Red wines should be purple ruby or ‘tawny’. With red wines the more purple they are the younger they are, the more orange/browny the older they are.

Does it smell clean or unclean? Sounds ridiculous but usually this is the way you can tell if it’s corked, musty or off before torturing your taste buds. The smell can also give you a hint of the taste, if it’s sugary, fruity, nutty, spicy, savoury and so on.

Swirl a small sip around the mouth to give every taste bud a chance. Do you taste sweetness at the tip of the tongue? Is it dry, medium or sweet?

If it tastes like lemons, it’s acidic. White wines are more acidic than reds.

Do you taste the tannin? This is the skin of the grape that’s coating your teeth, and tends to dry the mouth out; acid makes your mouth water. The alcohol should be sensed at the back of the throat as a warm fuzzy sensation.

Taste will tell you about its quality, maturity (reds get spicy, whites more honeyed as they get on), origin and grape variety.

The best way to try out wine is to travel. Always try to drink the wines that are a speciality of the local region. Unlike at home, the house white or red abroad is generally the best wine in the house.

France and Italy are the main – and are generally regarded as the leading – wine-producing countries. That said, you should not dismiss what else is on offer. Branch out and give the following a toast, in reverse order: Portugal, Argentina, South Africa, Chile, New Zealand, Hungary, Australia, California USA, Spain and Germany.

Generally speaking, Bordeaux are the best French wines and Barolos are known as the best Italian (‘the Bordeaux of Italy’). When in Spain you should opt for something from Rioja. In Germany it would be rude not to open a bottle from the Riesling or the Rhine. But do not forget America, it is one of the fastest expanding areas in the world for wine production. California is the nation’s richest wine-producing state, bottling wines to rival the French equivalent. The best way to work out what you like is to try as many varieties as you have lipsticks.

While some may mock the English vineyards, others look alarmed at the offerings from abroad. It’s a question of changing fashion as much as personal preference. However, it is fairly universally agreed that a cheap Bordeaux is as distasteful as the remnants at a car boot sale. Also avoid cheap Champers and Basic Beaujolais. Not saying you have to spend a king’s ransom, but you pay peanuts and you get monkeys does apply here. Bette Davis, as Margo Channing in
All About Eve
, said: ‘I admit I may have seen better days, but I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail like a salted peanut.’ Use this line.

To get rid of a wine stain

If you spill red wine, pour salt or white wine on top. Salt better for carpets, white wine for outfits.

Alcohol trivia to wow with

‘Gif me a visky, ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby,’ said Anna Christie (Greta Garbo) in 1930. It was one of the first drinks ordered in a talking picture.

Absinthe, said to cause blindness, insanity and even death, was Picasso’s, Hemingway’s and Van Gogh’s favourite creative tool.

With Guinness the bubbles go down instead of up because the bubbles in Guinness are mainly nitrogen. They rise like an erupting volcano and, unlike other bubbles, once they reach the top, they are too hyperactive to wait, so they fight all the way against the current to go down the glass. And then they do it all over again.

You do not become better-looking when drinking, nor is your eyesight affected but your brain fuzzes. That is why drinking and dating is bad news.

How to cure a hangover

‘Get out of those clothes and into a dry martini’
Mae West

Over-indulgence can lead to a mind-numbing headache, nausea and all kind of agony. Before you reach for two painkillers, a warm bath and go back to sleep, try these.

Tomato juice, aspirin and a long, hot shower.

Coffee made with tonic water, orange juice and honey.

Water, water, and more water.

Water and vitamin C (also water and calcium).

Water and vitamin B complex.

Vitamin E.

Buttermilk.

A greasy fry-up.

Fried canaries – popular with the Romans.

Munching a cabbage – relief for the Ancient Greeks.

‘Black Velvet’ – equal parts Champagne and flat Guinness, you’d need to be desperate.

A black peppercorn up the nose: it’s like an anaesthetic, but can cause nose bleeds.

Dark shades and sympathy.

‘Red-Eye’ – whisky, coffee, Tabasco sauce, a raw egg, pepper and orange juice blended together. Eugh.

If things are desperate lurid-pink Pepto-Bismol and water or Diorylte, the diarrhoea cure. Not glamorous but certainly rehydrates you fast.

Lots of icy-cold Coca Cola (not Diet Coke, full fat).

Marmite on toast.