The Official Sparkling Wine at the Emmys Is From…Italy

Written by Allison Levine on October 4, 2018

Lifestyle Wine

Last month, the 70th Annual Emmy Awards took place in Los Angeles. Lots of sparkling wine was being poured and that wine was not Champagne…..it was a sparkling wine from Italy, the Ferrari Brut Trento DOC! I wrote about how an Italian wine became the official sparkling wine of the Emmys in a recent column in the Napa Valley Register which you can read here.

The 70th Annual Emmy Awards took place this week, and throughout all the pre- and post-Emmy events, as well as at the ceremony itself, sparkling wine was being drunk.

Logically, you might think it was Champagne. But, in fact, the Official Sparkling Wine of Emmy Awards is from Italy. It is Ferrari Trento Brut DOC, a blanc de blanc made from Chardonnay and matured for two years in the bottle.

Please The Palate Pick of the Week: Ferrari Brut, Trento DOC

Written by Allison Levine on September 22, 2018

Wine

If you love sparkling wine as much as I do, you want to drink it all the time. And that is how my week started off, drinking lots of sparkling wine. Specifically, I was drinking Ferrari Brut Trento DOC from Italy. Ferrari Trento celebrates the “Italian art of living” and embodies elegance and excellence. It is the Official Sparkling Wine of Emmy® Awards season as well as the Please The Palate pick of the week.

Ferrari Trento is located in the Trentino region in the Northeastern section of Italy. The vineyards are at a high elevation and experience warm days and cool nights which allow the grapes to mature while maintaining freshness. Read More +

Five Reasons to Say Goodbye to Your Champagne Flutes

Written by Allison Levine on March 27, 2018

Lifestyle Wine

This story originally appeared in the Napa Valley Register.

OK, I admit it. I watch the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I watch it for some mindless, vapid fun. But, recently I was annoyed by a story line that took place. One of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills had the other women over to her house and rosé wine was accidentally served in a Champagne flute.

Another of the housewives, Dorit, proceeded to make a big deal about this mistake, embarrassing the host. Dorit arrogantly stated, “The fact that I know a wine glass from a Champagne glass is etiquette” and that she feels “like it needs to go in the right glass.”

Well, the reality star needs to know what the right glass is, and it is not a Champagne flute. While the Champagne flutes are synonymous with sparkling wine, ask most sommeliers and they will tell you the same thing. Nathaniel Munoz, wine director of the Rose Café in Venice, California explained, “Champagne has a gorgeous complexity of aromatics from red apple, to golden raisins, to chalk, to rich marzipan and milk chocolate. Restricting those notes because someone thinks it’s fancy to watch carbonation bubbles float to the top of the glass just seems uneducated.”

Maurizio Zanella, founder of Ca’ del Bosco, one of Italy’s foremost Franciacorta producers, offers five reasons why we should never use a Champagne flute.