{"id":2971,"date":"2025-04-30T16:12:36","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T16:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2971"},"modified":"2025-10-21T20:14:03","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T20:14:03","slug":"freixinet-back-when","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2971","title":{"rendered":"Freixenet, Back When"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are many sparkling wines made around the various corners of Wine Country.\u00a0 Unquestionably the best and the best known is Champagne, which must be made in a particular section of northern France.\u00a0 There are some nice bubbly wines made in Napa Valley.\u00a0 The Germans and Austrians make Sekt.\u00a0 Italians produce Prosecco.\u00a0 And in Spain, not far from Barcelona, they grow grapes and make Cava from them.\u00a0 Among the best known Cavas in the United State was \u2013 and is \u2013 Freixenet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the day, far off in the past, we didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Photo courtesy of Grupo Freixinet.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we also knew that we couldn\u2019t afford real Champagne.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That was when we discovered Freixenet.\u00a0 In the beginning, it came in a frosted bottle.\u00a0 The bottle alone and a difficult-to-pronounce name made it seem so chic and, well, European.\u00a0 Later Freixenet offered their Cordon Negro in a black bottle, which added elegance to its appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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? <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes we did and it introduced us to sparkling wine, in itself and as a part of being grown-up.\u00a0 There was mystery and romance in a bottle of Freixenet, a sense that someday we could be sophisticated if we tried, if only we knew how.\u00a0 The idea of Freixenet 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days we only drink French Champagne and occasionally a top-end California sparkling wine.\u00a0 We know a great deal more about wine and wine tasting than we did in our youth, which we guess makes us more sophisticated.\u00a0 But do we really enjoy<\/em> it any more than we did when we were drinking Freixenet back then?\u00a0 We\u2019re not sure; alas, we can\u2019t remember.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once we hosted a blind tasting of Champagnes.\u00a0 Just for fun we included a bottle of Freixenet.\u00a0 One of our guests actually chose the Freixenet as her favorite.\u00a0 De gustibus non disputandem est<\/em> as the Romans used to say (there\u2019s no arguing with taste), nor with good memories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are many sparkling wines made around the various corners of Wine Country.\u00a0 Unquestionably the best and the best known is Champagne, which must be made in a particular section of northern France.\u00a0 There are some nice bubbly wines made in Napa Valley.\u00a0 The Germans and Austrians make Sekt.\u00a0 Italians produce Prosecco.\u00a0 And in Spain, … Continue reading Freixenet, Back When<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2971"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3107,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions\/3107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}