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The world's oldest champagne, bottled before Victoria became Queen, is still drinkable, with notes of "truffles and caramel", according to the experts. An "addictive" bottle of 1825 Perrier-Jouet was opened at a ceremony attended by 12 of the world's top wine tasters. Their verdict: the 184-year-old champagne tasted better than some of its younger counterparts

“The Widow Clicquot,” Tilar J. Mazzeo’s sweeping oenobiography of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, is the story of a woman who was a smashing success long before anyone conceptualized the glass ceiling. Her destiny was formed in the wake of the French Revolution when, Mazzeo suggests, “modern society — with its emphasis on commerce and the freedom of the individual — was invented.” Barbe-Nicole, daughter of a successful textile maker turned Jacobin, is portrayed as someone whose way of doing business helped define the next century. Fate cursed or blessed her with the mantle of early widowhood. Her husband, a winemaker from...

Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House. But a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, immigrants living in modest circumstances in Boston, have a contrasting American story. Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston. A second relative believed to be the long-lost “Uncle Omar” described in the book was beaten by armed robbers...

October 17, 2008 -- THOUGH he's battling GOP accusations that he's an Ivy League elitist, Barack Obama has a lifestyle of the rich and famous, like TV show host Robin Leach, who always signed off, "Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!" While he was at a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Michelle Obama called room service....

THOUGH he's battling GOP accusations that he's an Ivy League elitist, Barack Obama has a lifestyle of the rich and famous,(clip)While he was at a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Michelle Obama called room service and ordered lobster hors d'oeuvres, two whole steamed lobsters, Iranian caviar and champagne,(clip)

In bars, restaurants and homes across Sweden champagne is flowing in abundance as Swedes enjoy a seemingly endless thirst for the bubbly beverage, spurred by a gastronomic "revolution" and a rosy economy. Champagne sales at stores run by the alcohol distribution monopoly Systembolaget are expected to hit an all-time high of one million bottles this year, excluding sales in bars and restaurants. That figure can be compared to 738,000 bottles sold last year and 287,000 a decade ago. "Drinking champagne is usual now and it's common not only at the weekend or to celebrate a special event, it's an everyday...

Britain faces a champagne shortage because vineyard owners in eastern France are refusing to sell tens of millions of bottles stocked in their cellars. Their unwillingness to give up what they see as their retirement nest eggs has left the country’s most prestigious champagne houses struggling to keep pace with a rise in demand in the US and developing countries. Champagne experts say that producers will soon be unable to supply emerging markets in Russia, China and India as well traditional customers in countries such as Britain. Patrick Le Brun, head of the union of champagne vineyard owners, said that...

BREAKING NEWS: EARLY RESULTS ARE IN SARKOZY 54.5% - ROYAL 45.5% FRENCH BLOGGER outside France, FReeper drzz: http://drzz.romandie.com/

Tucked away in the lea of the South Downs, so isolated that even local villagers barely know it is there, is Nyetimber, the vineyard that has almost single-handedly transformed the reputation of English wines.Started by two eccentric Americans ambitious to compete with the best that the Champagne region has to offer, in less than 20 years it has gained a reputation among aficionados as one of the world's best sparkling wines. It has also spawned a host of imitators across England and created for the first time a future for the domestic wine industry. Now Nyetimber has been taken over...

EPERNAY, France (AFP) - Life is sweet in Champagne country, the one region untouched by the deepening crisis besetting France's wine industry, but the bubbly these days tends to be on the dry side, even bone dry. Many Champagne lovers don't realize that all but a minuscule fraction of their favorite sparkling wine is dosed -- sometimes heavily -- with sugar shortly before it goes to market, ideally to create a balanced wine but all too often to mask insufficient ageing and an unpleasant acidity borne of immature grapes. Even the "Brut" category, which accounts for nearly 95 percent of...

ABOARD THAI AIRWAYS TO LOS ANGELES - John Mark Karr, the suspect in the death of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, sipped champagne and ate fried king prawns in business class Sunday after being put aboard a flight to Los Angeles to face charges in the United States. As Karr wined and dined in style and chatted with the three U.S. officials escorting him, another bombshell emerged: Reports that Karr sought treatment at a Thai sex-change clinic. His Thai Airways International flight took off about 8 p.m. (9 a.m. EDT) for the 15-hour flight to Los Angeles. Karr's journey will eventually end...

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Rapper and Def Jam Records President Jay-Z's much-hyped boycott of Cristal isn't likely to cost the vintage champagne brand any dead presidents, according to beverage industry experts. But it could give Cristal's competitors a reason to pop a few corks of their own. Music mogul Jay-Z is unhappy with the public comments of Frederic Rouzaud, managing director of Cristal parent Louis Roederer. The tempest in a champagne flute kicked off when Frederic Rouzaud, managing director of Cristal parent Louis Roederer, told The Economist that he viewed his brand's ubiquity in hip-hop lyrics and videos -- such as...

The deputy leader of the German state of Bremen has been forced to relinquish his post after he poured a magnum of champagne over a homeless man in what he claimed was a joke. Germany's newspapers yesterday carried frame-by-frame shots of the incident, in which Peter Gloystein, a member of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Bremen's economics minister, was shown on a podium, gleefully dousing Udo Oelschläger with champagne. Mr Gloystein, who was attending the public opening of Bremen Wine Week, said as he poured: "Here's something for you to drink as well." Mr Oelschläger burst into tears and responded:...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union said on Tuesday the World Trade Organization had ruled in its favor in a dispute with the United States over the EU's system for protecting food and drink denominations. "Rejecting the arguments of the United States and Australia, the WTO rules that the EU's system [that is, socialism] for protecting these names is essentially compatible with WTO rules," the European Commission said in a statement.

A Tribute to the French: Eleven thousand soldiers lay beneath the dirt and stone, all buried on a distant land so far away from home. For just a strip of dismal beach they paid a hero's price, to save a foreign nation they all made the sacrifice. And now the shores of Normandy are lined with blocks of white: Americans who didn't turn from someone else's plight. Eleven thousand reasons for the French to take our side, but in the moment of our need, they chose to run and hide. Chirac said every war means loss, perhaps for France that's...

March 17 (Bloomberg) -- Britain extended its lead over theU.S. as the champagne export capital of the world as U.K.drinkers' consumption of the French wine rose 8.8 percent in 2003. Champagne drinkers bought 34 million bottles in the U.K.last year, as popularity among young people increased for a thirdstraight year. The U.K. market is now almost twice the size ofthe U.S., the second-largest market, according to industry groupthe Comite Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne. ``The younger generation have made it their drink,'' BrunoPaillard, co-head of the Epernay, France-based group, said in aninterview at the Champagne Information Bureau's annual tastingevent at...

<p>While we were all popping the cork on New Year's Eve, a dubious milestone was quietly passing: The United States and Europe wrapped up their 20th year of failed trade talks on wine. Bilateral negotiations began in 1983, under the Reagan administration.</p>

Seize the good stuff. A couple of months ago, a friend bought me a bottle of pink champagne to celebrate a job I'd landed and we talked about popping it open on the spot. But we'd gotten together for an early pizza dinner on a school night and it would have wrecked us for the rest of the evening and how could we manage laundry, bills, and loose ends — all the things we'd squeeze in later after the kids were in bed. Now my friend is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer and we can't share the wine. No alcohol...

CANAL DU MIDI, France--It's high summer in France: bikinis blossom on the beach at St. Tropez and lovers stroll in lingering twilight beneath the Eiffel Tower. The only things missing from these postcard-perfect scenes are Americans. Still fuming over French President Jacques Chirac's active opposition to the war in Iraq, Americans are taking out their ire by staying home or vacationing elsewhere. "I doubt I'll ever set foot in France again," a hawkish friend from Kansas e-mailed me. Other friends who are veterans echoed the same sentiment. "France?" You couldn't pay me to go there!" snorted one. Well, somebody did...

A Swedish commercial court has fined dairy group Arla Foods AB for advertising a yogurt by saying it tastes of champagne, ruling Arla must not in any way allude to the reputation of the bubbly French wine.The market court’s ruling said Arla must pay the plaintiffs $US86,060 to cover their legal fees.Two champagne lobbies based in France - INAO and CIVC - as well as French producers Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin and Pierre Cheval, sued Arla after the cooperative owned by Swedish and Danish dairy farmers launched products it said had “champagne flavor”.Sweden and Denmark are members of the European Union,...

Court battle looms over name of Champagne The 657 inhabitants of the Swiss village of Champagne in the Jura mountains have been making white wine for at least 1,000 years and naming it after their village. They might have to stop that if one particular clause in the Swiss-EU Agreement stands, reported the Daily Telegraph. The French wine-making empire wants them to change the name because, they say haughtily, it trades off the name of French champagne, which has been made only since the seventeenth century. So far the French Government and various French manufacturers have won most battles over...