**This post is being entered in the Monthly Wine Writing Challenge hosted by wine blogger, The Drunken Cyclist. See more details HERE. The winner last month was my blogger buddy Jim of JvB Uncorked. He won with THIS POST on the topic of “solitude”. Jim also selected the topic of “bubbles” for this month’s challenge. Enjoy! **Voting began on Tuesday, September 13. Please vote HERE. I remember that feeling of excitement when bubbles were blown in my vicinity when I was a little girl. The goal was to either catch them on your finger or pop them, but you pretty much HAD to get up and do something. Because……BUBBLES! Fast forward 30 years and I pretty much still have the same reaction to bubbles, aka sparkling wine. I hear a cork pop, or I see a glass of sparkling wine and I just HAVE to get up and do something! My name is Brianne and I was a kid who loved bubbles and I am now an adult who loves bubbles. Bubbles are alive in the glass and somehow make life more exciting. Interestingly enough, sparkling wine was first made by mistake. Fizziness in wine was considered a fault during the winemaking process. At the risk of this post becoming a history lesson, let’s fast forward to a time when wine was intentionally made fizzy and consumed with bubbles. In a nutshell, sparkling wine was first made accidentally. Through years of trial and error, a sparking wine was successfully produced. Because of the involved process, sparking wine was more expensive than still wine, and hence became a drink of the wealthy upper class. It became a status symbol to have sparkling wine in your home and serve it at dinner or at an event. How is sparkling wine made? Take a look at my previous post HERE for a quick read on how bubbles get in bubbly. Somewhere along the way, sparkling wine (mostly Champagne) became associated with celebration. It is served at important life events such as weddings, it is used in the symbolic gesture of a “toast”, and is also used to christen a ship before its maiden voyage. Let us deconstruct the bubble. Sparkling wine (whether it’s Champagne, Cava, Prosecco, etc) is a sensory experience. We HEAR the “pop” of a cork after it is released from the bottle. Visually we SEE the bubbles race up the side of glass after the frothy liquid is poured. If you sniff a glass of Champagne, you can SMELL the yeasty lees on the nose. Put the juice in your mouth and you can TASTE the complexity and FEEL the effervescence of bubbles on your tongue. Bottom line, Champagne is sexy as hell. The sensory experience above can be read as a step-by-step recounting of opening up and enjoying a bottle of Champagne, or it can be read as a metaphor for the excitement of being with a lover for the first time. The sounds of lovemaking, the smell of each other, the taste and feel of that lover on your lips, and final release. The parallels are clear. In fact the two are quite complementary. A glass of bubbles before or after lovemaking is quite extraordinary. Sparkling wine is no longer something reserved for the upper class elite in society. That’s why god invented Andre and Cooks, both of which both clock in at about $4-$5 a bottle! Not my bubbles of choice, but there is something for everyone. We can all have the experience of a celebratory glass of bubbles. But why wait for a wedding or a toast? Let’s all enjoy bubbles when we please. There is nothing more satisfactory and pleasurable than sitting on the couch with a glass of bubbles on a Tuesday night while watching TV. Bubbles are alive in your glass. They are dynamic, moving, and ever-changing. Like us. So sit back, relax, and enjoy a glass of humanity. Enjoy a glass of bubbles. Why? Because the meaning of life is to live it. **Please vote HERE for this blog post in the Monthly Wine Writing Challenge. Speaking of bubbles, in about a month I will be attending BubblyFest in Avila Beach. Bubblyfest is the definitive festival for all things sparkling! Thanks to Create Promotions for granting me a press pass to cover the event. Stay tuned for more bubbly related posts as I lead into the event!
