There are many sparkling wines made around the various corners of Wine Country. Unquestionably the best and the best known is Champagne, which must be made in a particular section of northern France. There are some nice bubbly wines made in Napa Valley. The Germans and Austrians make Sekt. Italians produce Prosecco. And in Spain, not far from Barcelona, they grow grapes and make Cava from them. Among the best known Cavas in the United State was – and is – Freixinet.
Back in the day, far off in the past, we didn’t know about any of that. If it had bubbles, it was champagne. In fact, despite the fact that the French owned the name, there were (and still are, in a few instances) American sparkling wines that were called champagne, right there on the label. There was even something that had bubbles called Cold Duck; even then we knew that this stuff was awful.
Photo courtesy of Grupo Freixinet.
But we also knew that we couldn’t afford real Champagne. A bottle of Moet & Chandon might have cost $10, but that was a lot of money when we were just starting out on adult life. That was when we discovered Freixinet. In the beginning, it came in a frosted bottle. The bottle alone and a difficult-to-pronounce name made it seem so chic and, well, European. Later Freixinet offered their Cordon Negro in a black bottle, which added elegance to its appeal.
The fact that it cost about two dollars made it accessible even for our pocketbooks in those days. And so we opened it whenever there was something to celebrate: The end of the semester. Our team winning a championship. Friday. We had no idea how to open a bottle, what kind of glasses to pour it in or how to sip it. We just knew that it had bubbles and that we liked it.
Not that long ago, we had the opportunity to try it once again. By that point, we had been drinking real Champagne for many years and the Freixinet was a disappointment. Did we really drink that stuff?
Yes we did and it introduced us to sparkling wine, in itself and as a part of being grown-up. There was mystery and romance in a bottle of Freixinet, a sense that someday we could be sophisticated if we tried, if only we knew how. The idea of Freixinet was in many ways more important than what was in the bottle (or on the floor because we thought the right way to enjoy it was to spray some when we opened a bottle).
These days we only drink French Champagne and occasionally a top-end California sparkling wine. We know a great deal more about wine and wine tasting than we did in our youth, which we guess makes us more sophisticated. But do we really enjoy it any more than we did when we were drinking Freixinet back then? We’re not sure; alas, we can’t remember.
Once we hosted a blind tasting of Champagnes. Just for fun we included a bottle of Freixinet. One of our guests actually chose the Freixinet as her favorite. De gustibus non disputandem est as the Romans used to say (there’s no arguing with taste), nor with good memories.