I Get No Kick from Prosecco

Hello, Everybody—nice seeing you again.

Sluggo used to drink a lot, which is why he doesn’t drink at all now. But once a year, on New Year’s Eve, I come home with a little bottle of Champagne and we drink a toast and eat some fantastically bland cookies that my Grammy C. taught me to make. She called them “biscotti,” and so I grew up thinking that biscotti were small, round, baking-powder-biscuit-like cookies. I was delighted the first time I saw “biscotti” on a menu in New York, and then I was dismayed when I got served a hard, rusky little thing like a petrified slice of toast.

For years, I thought Grammy C. had made a big mistake. Then, this year, there were actual Italian-speaking Italian people from Italy at Dr. Colby’s big New Year’s Day party, to which I’d brought some of the biscotti I’d baked the night before. I offered some to Umberto, and told him, very apologetically, that my grandmother had called these cookies “biscotti,” but now I knew that was wrong. Umberto told me that, on the contrary, “biscotti” was sort of a generic term, and that technically these odd little cookies were, indeed, biscotti. I was so happy! “So,” he said, “your grandmother was Italian.”

“No. She was Welsh,” I replied. That seemed to confuse him. “Welsh,” he said. He repeated it a couple of times and walked away, and I never did speak to him again, but it made me very, very happy to find out that Grammy C. knew a biscotti when she baked one.

Last year, when we still had a little money, I got a book about wine as a Christmas present. I read all about Champagne, and Prosecco, and Cava, and Sekt. Then I went to a Champagne tasting at Astor Place, and started researching, I don’t know, domains and stuff. I don’t remember much of it any more, unfortunately. But I decided that instead of doing what I usually do, which is randomly grabbing a bottle of whatever was on sale for New Year’s Eve, I was going to make a thoughtful and informed choice. I took my notes and went back to Astor Place on the afternoon of December 31, ready to buy some really good (but not too expensive) Champagne.

Naturally, it was a madhouse. There was one poor, overworked Champagne guy trying to help dozens and dozens of empty-headed little NYU students who just wanted something that would get them drunk as quickly and as painlessly as possible. The poor guy would ask if he could help them, and they’d say they wanted some Champagne, and he’d ask what style they liked, and they’d look at him as if he were speaking click language, and then he’d steer them to the Korbel or whatever was selling for less than $10 a bottle. Physically, the guy reminded me of WFMU’s Program-and-Music Director Brian, and later it turned out that he was like Program-and-Music Director Brian in other ways as well. Finally my turn came, and the Champagne guy asked wearily if he could help me, and I told him I’d like a small bottle of something dry  (as in brut, not “extra-dry,” which actually means a little sweet), and light-bodied. I told him my husband liked Moet & Chandon White Star (which IS extra-dry), but I preferred the Billecart-Salmon we’d had for the faux-Millennium in 2000. Oh, and I didn’t have a lot of money to spend. And I mispronounced all the French words, including “Champagne.”

“Here,” said the Champagne guy, handing me a wee bottle of Champagne Gosset (La plus ancienne Maison de vins de la Champagne: Ay 1584) Excellence Brut. “You’ll like this.”

I should have known when he said it that he sounded exactly the way Program-and-Music Director Brian used to sound when he would recommend a CD. “Here,” he’d say as he handed me a some home-burned disc with a black-and-white xeroxed cover of a collage of newspaper photos of explosions and big black dogs, “You should play this on your show.” Then I would play it, and as the mingled sounds of tubas and screaming baboons filled the studio I would realize I’d been tricked again. I don’t believe Program-and-Music Director Brian meant to fool me, it’s just that he has heard so much more music than almost any other living human being that he has developed very specialized and advanced tastes in things, far more advanced than mine. That’s probably what happened with the Astor Place Champagne guy.

At midnight that New Year’s Eve I brought out the plate of Grammy C’s biscotti, and Sluggo popped open the Champagne Gosset Excellence Brut, and we poured two glasses of it, and took a bite of cookie and took a sip of—liquid flint. This was not a drink, it was a LESSON. I could just picture the embittered and desiccated old Frenchman responsible for it, sitting in his dry and airless cave, sucking on hunks of quartz and planning his revenge on the foolish Americans and their terrible, uneducated taste in wine. Maybe—maybe—if we’d been eating some superb shellfish dish or something, Champagne Gosset Excellence Brut would have been delicious. But believe me, it does not pair well with Welsh biscotti.

So this year I got the inevitable $4 bottle of Freixenet Cordon Negro Cava, and it was perfectly fine.

I also opened the bottle myself, which is one of the Three Things In The Kitchen I’ve Always Been Afraid To Do, the other two being to cook something in a pressure cooker and to light the gas when there’s a pot sitting on top of the burner. I tried to deal with all three of these phobias over the holiday season, and I did get the Freixenet opened without incident, but the other two got me kicked out of a kitchen supply store and I also set the arm of my sweater on fire. I am just lucky that J. Crew happened to send a load of flame-retardant cotton to their Sri Lankan sweatshop 10 years ago when they made the thing, or I wouldn’t be typing this to you now.

So thanks for reading my blog entry this week, Happy New Year, and may God Bless.

Comments

[WmMBerger]

Thanks, Bronwyn, I just laughed my head off reading your post. Now I must go sew it back on. Happy New Year!

[Mac]

Biscotti means "twice cooked" in Italiano.
Biscotti can be just about any type of baked small cookie, biscuit, or dried toast.
Great story.

[John L]

Buying a pressure cooker gets you thrown out of a cooking supply store? What's the deal with that?

And I need to check but did you ever go to New Orleans? I'd love to read about that.

Cheers,

John L

[toober]

The idea behind most biscotti is that one dunks them in various alcoholic beverages (sambuca is a favorite), and they loose that tungsten carbide consistency.

--
Will

[sean808080]

what a great story. we miss ya on air!!