by Michael Parker

Dom Catawba

Just another Wednesday night in January it was, after a long meeting planning the 2012 Asheville Mardi Gras. I needed a drink. “Need” is a funny word, isn’t it? Yes, need. The need was for a good local dark beer. (People give me a hard time for drinking beer more often than wine. I am unaware of any rule requiring otherwise. I drink enough wine. Have faith.)

When you spend some twenty years tasting and drinking and talking the subject, it must be like getting old and enjoying the freedoms that come with age, especially in saying what you think and making choices that surprise others.

So there I was, in my favorite bar, sipping the Honest Injun Stout from Catawba Valley Brewing Company, chatting with people merely familiar to well known, when my side-vision caught the unmistakable shield-shaped label on a Champagne bottle lifted from an ice bucket. I tried not to look like I was looking as I looked, caught the vintage (2002), and sipped my stout.

“Have some.” It was Kevin, you know, the guy with the big mustache. I declined with thanks, and made sure others heard me vocalize that I preferred my stout. He insisted, and I eventually gave in.
Yes, it was perfect. Concentrated, yet creamy, a texture riddled with the finest bubbles imaginable. There are a lot of good Champagnes out there, a lot of excellent têtes de cuvee, but this is not one to blow off. I have long said that La Grande Dame is the definition of finesse in a Champagne, but the 2002 Dom Pérignon is it as well.

Having explored Champagne and sparkling wine for a long time, discovering and learning about the alternatives has turned me into a different kind of snob, the kind that goes overboard preaching about the alternatives. I have long felt that the Moët et Chandon brand gets way too much free publicity. Dom Pierre Pérignon, the French Benedictine Monk, did not invent Champagne. The world’s first sparkling wines were produced in Limoux in the early 1500’s by abbey monks in Saint-Hilaire.

But reverse-snobbery can be fun, a silly competition of name brand-dropping, and a time to be cooler-than-you for the one stubbornly clutching a Catawba Stout.

Who let it slip?

I remember from old reels of The Three Stooges, and quite possibly old cartoons rerun in the 1970’s, something about drinking Champagne from a lady’s slipper. A child’s mind interpreted the concept as something that was supposed to be funny, an adult mind remembering this sooner or later recognizes that this was an introduction to fetishism, and something John Waters left out his satirical sex comedy A Dirty Shame.

Yes, as a child I thought the concept was funny, but we all eventually get too old for candy cigarettes, and all I have to say about it now is, “Ewww. Who the hell ever thought that was a good idea?”

A swift general answer is, the Russians. There is a scattering of quotes pulled from poems and scripts around the internet about slipper-sipping, but there is one about slipper-eating. In the 1800’s, Europe enjoyed a period in dance history called the Romantic Era. Women took the limelight away from the male dancers at this time. They had a cult following.

The central figure was a ballerina named Marie Taglioni. When she left behind a pair of white satin pointe shoes in a Saint Petersburg hotel, the landlord sold them for top ruble – one thousand. A group of 36 particularly fanatic fans pooled their money, purchased the slippers, agreed they be cooked in a fricassée, and ate the slippers. Accompanying wine: Champagne.

It’s a good bet that the eating of slippers pushed an envelope, that drinking from the slippers was already acceptable in the “cult of the ballerina.” No doubt this ritual had also already expanded beyond pointe shoes to women’s shoes in general, a ritual that inspired Champagne House Piper-Heidsick to join forces with shoe maker Christian Louboutin and produce a box set of Champagne and a high-glass shoe, naming the set “Le Rituel.”

Le Rituel de Grand Krewe

Asheville Mardi Gras 2012 is this month. Two events for your February calendar: The Second Annual Running of the Winos will move swiftly from wine bar to wine bar in downtown Asheville on Wednesday, February 8. The 2012 Asheville Mardi Gras Parade and Ball will happen in downtown Asheville on Sunday, February 19. Do a Google search on “Asheville Mardi Gras” and the official website will pop right up.

The Grand Krewe (Grand Cru – get it?) is the krewe for wine lovers. Feel free to join us and march in the parade.