When we had Aldo Sohm, master sommelier and author of Wine Simple: Perfect Pairings: An Ingenious Guide to Enjoying Wine with Food, on our podcast, Cycling Conversations with inGamba, earlier this year, we expected that many of his recommendations for choosing the right wine would be complicated. But instead, Aldo surprised us with his joyful approach to wine and wine pairings. And one of our favorite takeaways was his view on champagne. As it turns out, it’s not just for the occasional ‘cheers’ or as a post-bike race celebration, Tour de France style. Rather, with few exceptions, it’s a surprisingly versatile, crisp complement to most foods.
As Aldo put it in our conversation, “When don’t you want to drink champagne?” It’s a great question, and one with a surprising answer if you’re someone who has typically reserved champagne for celebrations, mimosa-making, or as an obligatory wedding toast beverage. But it’s more versatile than that: Barring heavy, sweet treats like chocolate cake, champagne’s crisp notes make most flavor profiles sing and zing.
Aldo writes that sometimes you choose a wine that complements a dish, like a fruity wine with dessert, but sometimes the wine is there to serve as a contrast and create a push and pull with the dish.
“We often see champagne as this one bubbly beverage, yet it’s so much more,” he says. “It makes a difference whether it’s from white grapes, like Chardonnay, or it’s from the dark grapes, like Pinot Noir. And if you use a Blanc de Noir grape with a little bit of age, it can pair extremely well to a steak.” (As he said in Wine Simple, “Champagne is one of the most food-friendly wines: It goes with almost anything!”)
His hot take on ice cold champagne may come down to being a bit of a rebel, or at least, a thought leader in the space. Cyclists are known for doing things a bit differently, and Aldo is a cyclist at heart. Of champagne, he says, “Is it uncommon for the general public [to pair it with a meal]? Yes. But there are many things that are uncommon in the cycling world, and all of a sudden, they become the norm, right? It would have been unimaginable to ride with 32 millimeter tires just 15 years ago, or to ride with cassettes with a 34 in the back. They would have been laughed out of the peloton. But today, these are the most normal things. So these norms can be broken.”
Champagne is also ideal for post-ride on a hot day, says Aldo—though he does occasionally prefer an icy beer!
Finally, remember Aldo’s number one advice about wine: It’s more fun with friends. “To me, drinking a glass of wine with others is always the best part, because—and I see this on a daily basis at my wine bar—when you assemble 10 random people from all walks of life, you give them one or two glasses of wine, they start talking with each other. By the third glass, they’re talking about their childhoods, their mothers’ cooking. There’s a genuine sharing element that really comes in. Wine is my passion, but when I taste or when I open a new bottle of wine, one of my first thoughts is who do I know who would love that wine, or who would I love to share this with?”
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