After the holiday time for drinking egg nogs, hot toddies, and wassails, much of the world ends the year on a zippy and festive note with champagne. I love to drink champagne from the glamorous coupe glass.
Champagne drinkers may tell you that the broad surface of the coupe allows champagne to lose its bubbles more quickly, making it less suitable for very dry champagnes. However, the coupe is very good for allowing you to fully smell the champagne. I find I can solve the bubble problem just by drinking my champagne a little bit faster!
Julia Child tried to save her bubbles from a bottle of Dom Pérignonwith a stopper. She proved that the champagne was still bubbly three days later.
Dom Pérignonis credited with inventing champagne. He understood the art of blending and used grapes from different parcels of the local farmers.
Champagne was the drink of nobility. Think about the French court at Versailles. They publicized their status by the vessel from which they treated themselves with champagne.
The coupe glass is often claimed to have been modeled from Marie Antoinette’s breast down to the enunciated nipple grooved on the base of the stand. The coupe actually has its origins rooted in England but I find Marie Antoinette’s story to be more memorable (and a bit more of an ice breaking conversation starter on New Year’s Eve).
I think the coupe is so glamorous especially after watching one of my favorite movies from 1942, Casablanca. I like to imagine myself as Ingrid Bergman toasting with hunky Humphrey Bogart. Casablanca has many toasts that work well for a New Year’s Eve celebration. Some of my favorites: Here’s looking at you kid, To America, and We’ll always have Paris.
Coupes were all the rage through the 1930s-1960s. Places like the New York’s Stork Club popularized the coupe in the 1930s when celebrities drank champagne from the coupe. We may see the romantic coupe today at weddings near the ever so popular champagne fountain.
If you’re not drinking champagne in your coupe you could always use it for a sorbet or daiquiri.
Champagne was and still is linked to celebration. Here’s to drinking many glamorous glasses of champagne in a coupe in 2012! As Marie Antoinette would have said to her court, Bonne année et bonne santé! Happy New Year to all!
This summer if you can’t go to Paris, I have a movie recommendation that will transport you there. Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (which opened the Cannes Film Festival) takes you into the nostalgic era of music, art, and writing of the 1920’s. A romantic time of pleasure, joie de vivre, art, whimsy, and enchantment.
It’s about a young engaged couple who realize they’re not meant for each other once they’re in Paris; and then there is the illusion that life in a different place and time would be better. When life is unsatisfying, it’s easy to wish you could escape into a different period by time travel, that’s why most people love fantasy.
The beauty of going to the movies is we can be transported back in time. We turn to movies and books to escape, Midnight in Paris is the whole package that is a pleasure to behold and then again and again.
Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard
Rachel McAdams and Owen Wilson
Paris is zee world’s GREATEST city, bien sûr! Midnight in Paris is a beautiful love letter to the divine 1920’s Paris. Gil (Owen Wilson) thinks Paris looks best in the rain, but no matter the weather or the time, Midnight in Paris will take your breath away and leave you wanting to stay in the theatre and experience it again and again.
In a world full of wishes that are easily granted, Gil (a discouraged TV writer) dreams of becoming an expatriate writer. His fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams) wants Gil to keep doing what he does best so she can keep enjoying his credit cards. Gil and Inez meet up with Inez’s old flame Paul (Michael Sheen) who is an arrogant intellectual arguing with the museum guide of Musée Rodinwho happens to be Carla Bruni (model, singer, first lady of France, now actress).
We later learn from Gertrude Stein that Gil’s novel may not be half bad. This gives Gil hope.
It is a fantasy of mine to become an expat writer and live in Tuscany like Frances Mayes. I totally get Gil!
Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald
The fun begins when Gil (who is a little drunk) goes for a late-night stroll and gets lost. At midnight a gorgeous antique Peugeot pulls up with happy socialites drinking champagne. He does the right thing and gets in to join the party. He finds himself at a club where Cole Porter is playing the piano and he’s introduced to F. Scott Fitzgerald and his beautiful southern belle wife, Zelda (my favorite character).
Hemingway
I remember the summer I took a Hemingway to Fitzgerald English class at the University of Alabama. It was the perfect place to learn about Zelda because she was from Montgomery, Alabama. Alison Pill, who plays Zelda, lights up the screen and has a spot on southern accent that is fun to hear in Paris (especially when she says s'il vous plait)!
Gil befriends the ultra masculine Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (the fabulous Kathy Bates), fashion designer ingénue Adriana (Marion Cotillard), Picasso, Matisse… Each time Gil meets one of his golden era heroes his mouth falls to the floor.
Adriana (Marion Cotillard) has to be the world’s most beautiful woman past and present. She’s been Picasso’s, Braque’s, and Modigliani’s lover. I guess you could call her an art groupie.
Woody Allen’s always witty dialogue is sharp and hilarious. Some of my favorite Woody Allen movies I love because they satisfy my “I want to travel to Europe now” bug. Hop aboard the Woody Allen European tour: Match Point (England), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Spain), Mighty Aphrodite (Greece), Midnight in Paris (France)… As much as I adore a European backdrop, I think Woody Allen could turn a place that is not known for being romantic like Tuscaloosa, Alabama into a city of magic. Woody has that je ne sais quoi that works well in any place.
Do you ever feel like you should have been born in another time? I think this often because I like to read and escape into a fantasy. I also crave culture like water and Midnight in Paris satisfies my craving and puts me in a happy place.
Midnight in Paris reminds me of a Merchant and Ivory film because it has that international flair, beauty, and intelligence that those films produce but also the romance of the movies like Before Sunrise and After Sunset which put you in a love bubble.
In the end, Gil realizes that no time is idyllic and he can find happiness in the present. He decides to make the best of life in our own time and the ending is the REAL fairy tale, walking off in Paris in the rain with a beautiful Parisian. As they walk away I imagine they’re both singing Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love. Merci Woody! To get you in the “American in Paris” mood, enjoy these quotes then watch the trailer to the best movie you will have seen in a long, long time.
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. Hemingway
America is my country and Paris is my hometown. Gertrude Stein
History takes time. History makes memory. It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself. Gertrude Stein
First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.F. Scott Fitzgerald
You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.F. Scott Fitzgerald
Marlene Dietrich said, “Champagne makes you feel like its Sunday and better days are just around the corner. I love Sundays and summertime (and summer is just around the corner), add champagne to that and I’m as happy as a clam.
Summer drinks call for something cool, fruity, effervescent, zippy, and pink! My favorite beverage is champagne! I absolutely adore bubbles…give me ice cold Prosecco, sparkling wine, and Champagne for a hot Texas summer and I can transport myself to France, Italy, or California in a single sip.
It seems all the world associates champagne with good times and friendship. Think about celebrating weddings, baptisms, a new home, launching ships, ringing in the New Year…I like to drink the bubbly to ring in the summer. The joyous mist of champagne bubbles don’t have to be savored only on special occasions, you can drink those pretty stars to celebrate the little things in life too.
I’m attracted to all things feminine, unique, and pink, so when I saw Francis Ford Coppola’s Sofia (made for his famous daughter) I just had to try it. The packaging is glamorous in a hexagon box filled with a four pack of cans with pink little bendy straws. Sofia tastes refreshingly delicious like apples and pears with a hint of citrus and honey. Sofia mini Blanc de Blancs is the perfect wine to take with you to the beach, pool, or outside party. It’s a crisp and refreshing sparkling wine meant for summer. My friend Jen and I enjoyed some Sofia minis as a prelude to watching the movie Bridesmaids this past weekend and it definitely made for an extra fun and special girls night. Add a bubbly drink to two bubbly girls and you have enhanced the likelihood of laughter.
Another refreshing bubbly drink to cool you down in the summer is the Italian Prosecco, a sparkling wine that’s light, lemony, and fun. Like Sofia, Prosecco has overtones of citrus and honey. It’s a perfect summer wine. Try combining it with peach juice for the famous Italian cocktail, the Bellini.
Both Sofia and Prosecco are more affordable sparkling wines compared to Champagne but for those special occasions, I turn to the Widow (Veuve Clicquot). Being the ultra girly girl that I am, it’s just got to be pink. Veuve Cliquot Rose is my ultimate drink. It has a fruity charm and style and is lively and fresh for summer.
Cheers to all who make an effort to celebrate those better days that are just around the corner for you!
