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quite literally floated her way into a reigning position in the New
York society of the century's turn by the serving of Niagaras of the
very best sparkling wine and other people have done it since.
It
was ·Mamie Fish who abolished at her dinners as a tiresome bore
the classic service of a variety of wines, each appropriate to its
proper course, and served nothing but champagne from soup to
dessert with the result that her guests often got to Opera before the
end of the second act, an innovation which rocked society to its
foundations:
There is no food or time of the day and night when the service
and consumption of champagne is not both appropriate and agree–
able; a circumstance which attaches to no other beverage yet devised
by vintners, brewers or distillers. With the close of hostilities in
Europe the products of the great established champagne firms of
Rheims and Epernay are again almost universally available in the
brands always popular in the United States and England: Bollinger,
Veuve Clicquot, Mumm's, Perrier Jouet, Krug, Charles Heidsick,
Louis Roederer, Moet and Chandon, Lanson, and a
few
others of
the first importance. The vintages of '33
~nd
'37
will
undoubtedly
dominate the market for many years to come, but connoisseurs,
knowing that wine of vintage quality often is bottled as an undated
wine to protect the market, is never impressed by a vintage wine of
second quality when he finds on the card such numbers as Krug's
Private Cuvee, Bollinger Brut or Perrier·Jouet Dry England. The
sans annee wine is often a very superior product indeed with the
added inducement that it is usually a couple of dollars cheaper than
the vintage years whose prices are jealously and zealously main–
tained at high levels by shippers, dealers and restaurateurs alike.
Aside from champagnes, NewYork's taste in table wines runs
almost exclusively to claret and Burgundy and the German wines
of the Rhine. Bordeaux (claret) generally is regarded as less pre·
92: Stork Club Bar Book