Café Metropole™ Blanc de Blanc Wine By Ric Erickson and Allan Pangborn |
"The Moonlight Sparkling Wine Cellar™ winery is located in Kennewick in Washington state.
Kennewick is 220 miles southeast of Seattle and almost on the Oregon border. The Yakima,
Snake and Columbia Rivers converge here. It is a few miles north of the 46th parallel -
about on the same latitude as Burgundy."
See also the pages in Metropole Paris for this wine story that started in 1997. Enjoy the grapes virtually at least and hopefully you'll be able to have a wine tasting party soon.
Ordering and Shipping Café Metropole™ Sparkling Wine is available now to the residents of the following States: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. There are two packages available:
The price includes packaging and shipping costs. Shipment will be by UPS 3 day Select and an ADULT SIGNATURE is required for delivery. Overnight or 2 day shipment is available. The shipping charge will be slightly more, so email your order to acp@owt.com and include your ZIP Code and I can tell you the actual cost. Terms Payment by check or money order to "Cafe Metropole", mailed to:
If you intend to visit, please contact Allan prior to your visit. The laws controlling alcohol, tobacco and firearms probably account for 3/4ths of all the laws ever written in the USA. The fact that he must be notified before your visit is one of them!
Allan Pangborn, Winemaker
The Philosophy at Moonlight™
My goal for the Moonlight Sparkling Wine Cellar is to produce the best sparkling wine possible in Washington State. The méthode champenoise gives the winemaker a huge number of variables to influence the end product. These include the type of grape, maturity of the grape when harvested, temperature of the first fermentation, type of container - oak or stainless steel, that the wine ferments in, amount of aging of the cuvée before bottling for the second fermentation, the amount of sugar at tirage bottling determines amount of carbonation, amount and kind of reserve wine at tirage bottling, time on the yeast in tirage and the amount of sugar and other materials in the final dosage. The random length of time the customer ages the wine before opening it is a factor too - all of the variables affect the final product. I have some specific processes in mind to make a wine that is like no other produced in the United States. These are the result of 20 years of working with sparkling wine and observing how others make their wines. I have selected the steps which will give the most unique and enjoyable wine for the consumer. The champagne process occurs in a bottle so expensive that barrels and caves are not needed. A 60 gallon French Oak barrel costs $550 to $650 today and the price is always increasing. A temperature-controlled room has been built into my winery that will provide the bottles with the desired fermenting and aging conditions. My equipment is manual but it produces the same finished bottle as the mechanized high speed bottling and disgorging lines. The advantage I have when I hand-disgorge each bottle is that I can inspect it for defects or other negative factors that would lessen the quality of the wine. I have heard literally hundreds of thousands of bottles disgorge, so the sound of the 'pop' when the frozen plug blows out of the bottle tells me if the pressure is acceptable, if the bottle is healthy. I hold the bottle up and check the clarity to be sure the riddling was successful. I inspect the depth of insertion of the cork to make sure the customer can open the bottle. I fold the twisted end of the wirehood against the cork and make sure it is secure and will hold the cork in the bottle. I rub the bubbles out from under the label so it will lie flat and smooth against the bottle. The bottom line is not to delegate any task. I am not dependent on someone who is an employee to do the task, and I must try to train to do the job the same way I would. I cannot give them 30 years of experience to guide their every move. I have the luxury of taking the time to do this because I want to. And I know I can compete with the best of them because of my knowledge of the subject. I have amassed the tools necessary. I do not have a corporate structure to thwart creativity or waste energy in unproductive exercises. The Café Metropole Blanc de Blanc is made from Chardonnay grapes grown near Prosser, Washington, which were harvested when the sugar was 19 percent. A sugar content of 18 to 20 percent is the range for grapes to be made into sparkling wine. The wine was aged for a year in stainless steel before tirage bottling. The second fermentation and aging in the bottle took another year. Disgorging began on Friday, November 1, 2002. The dosage is one percent residual sugar and there is a bit of cognac in the dosage. The wine to me is clean, lightly flavorful, and refreshing. The acidity is balanced by the sweetness, and it goes well with food or by itself. My ideal of the perfect wine is one you drink with friends and the bottle is empty before you know it. In other words, you don't focus on the wine but it is a pleasing accompaniment to the enjoyable things in life. Sipping Café Metropole Blanc de Blanc at the café La Corona in Paris would be pretty close to perfection.
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Email – Linda@wfi.fr
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Copyright since 1995 by Linda Thalman - all rights reserved.
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