Bubbles!

If I'm going to start blogging again, it might as well be with a bang.

Or at least the pop of a sparkling wine bottle blowing its cork.

Maybe I should back up.

Wine!

It's been so long since I posted that you might not remember hubby made a career change last year. He left teaching to purse his love of wine by becoming a sommelier.

As part of this career change he has been taking classes through WSET to increase his knowledge and gain certifications that will help in his career.

The current section he's working on, for which he will test next week, is sparkling wine.

How it's made. Where it's made. The differences in taste. Etc etc.

Part of the test includes a blind tasting of at least two, if not three, wines. So he has to be familiar with them in order to identify them later.

Dangerous Bubbles

The thing about sparkling wine? It's got bubbles. Natural carbonation.

Back in the day (i.e., when it was first discovered) those bubbles used to make the bottles explode. Modern glass and wine making methods have reduced that risk.

But if you've ever enjoyed a glass of champagne on New Year's Eve (and, by the way, it can only be called champagne if it's from the Champagne region of France), you know it's hard to maintain those bubbles long term.

He's trying to taste through them quickly, but in the mean time we're using corks from standard bottles to plug them back up.

Well, it hasn't been working so well today!

This morning I got out his first round of blind tastings. Those fat-ass bottles got stuck in the wee wine fridge and got jostled around a bit as I was trying to get them out.

When I put the bottles on the counter the cork blew right out of that Aria cava on the left! It gave me a start and the cork ended up on the other side of the kitchen.

"You'll shoot and eye out, kid!"

No harm done. He tasted his wines and I got out three more, including opening a new bottle of a Pinot Noir Cava.

This evening I'm sitting in the living room and Baru and I hear a tap in the kitchen.

Of course, he starts barking his little head off (Samson wasn't interested), but we didn't see anything when we went to check.

A little while later I go back out to the kitchen to feed them and as I'm picking up their bowls I notice a puddle behind the wine fridge.

That pink tinge is a puddle of Pinot Noir Cava. There is some Dry Sec mixed in for good measure.

Two wines(!) blew their corks and spewed all over the fridge.

Even if I'd realized what it was, I don't think it would have helped. I imagine the wine shot out with some force and I couldn't have stopped it.

Much sponging and mopping later and it's all cleaned up. I put those bottles (along with the Cava from this morning) into the regular fridge hoping they'll be more stable.

Reasons to Mop

It's the second time this week I've had a horrific reason to mop.

Earlier in the week I pulled the garbage bag out and it started to leak.

This was a particularly rank bag, full of raw chicken bones and water from rinsing the coffee grounds out of the French Press every morning.

It was so foul I actually threw up into the bag a little.

I managed to get it outside by putting it on an empty kibble bag, but there was a nasty puddle on the floor.

Yeah, that was fun to clean up. Much mopping ensued.

Hmm, smell-wise I think I'd rather mop up spilled wine!