Unlock the secrets of festive wine and champagne shopping with our latest episode, where we reveal how to snag top-tier bubbly without breaking the bank. Curious about how to find irresistible deals on holiday champagne? We’ll walk you through the enchanting world of GH Mum Brut Grand Cordon Rosé, a standout choice from the Grand Cru vineyards that’s both elegant and delightfully complex. With its predominantly Pinot Noir blend, this champagne offers an exquisite balance of crispness, brioche notes, and a smooth finish—perfect for elevating your holiday celebrations.
If you’ve ever felt the thrill of landing a $50 bottle for just $25 (at a local Chicago Chain Store), you’re going to love our insights on finding the best wine bargains this season. With wine sales taking a dip, many shops are slashing prices, offering you the chance to explore upscale flavors at a fraction of the cost. We’ll also give you a sneak peek into our CheapWineFighter.com feature, where we dive into budget-friendly finds like a promising Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon. Keep your spirits high and your wallet happy as we guide you through a season of affordable indulgence. Cheers to a holiday filled with great wine and even better savings!
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or email us at podcast@cheapwinefinder.com
0:05
Welcome. It's a domain date for CheapWinefightercom, with kind of the start of our holiday party season with the wine, an upscale wine, and there's a story to be had behind this on what to be looking for this holiday season when you purchase wine. What I've got today is the GH Mum Brut Grand Cordon Rosé Champagne. It's normally see on the internet, I saw, for like $50 to $65. This is not a wine that a cheap wine finder would be doing. Normally we would try to find something from California or maybe from different parts of France where the prices aren't so high, but this was at one of the largest wine chains in Chicago area and beyond $25. The Grand Cordon Brut not the Rosé was $50. This is the Companion. It's the same house-style wine, only this is the Rosé, and Mums is known for their Rosé, their Pinot Noir. This might be the more desirable bottling and it's half half price champagne. It's like my luckiest day. And here's something Wine sales are off by 8% and all these wine shops out there are going to go. We need to try to make that up in the last month or last yeah, about the last month. There's only about five yeah, about a week to go before we hit December and you're going to find sales. You're going to find wines that you're going to go, you know. So follow their flyers, follow your local shop's internet, and you're going to see wines that if you're not even thinking about buying it, it's at a price you have to buy it at. I mean, you're going to go, I'm going to go in for that and that's what they want. They want you to go in and you buy one, and the price is so good Maybe we should buy two. And they're going to try to make up that 8% this holiday season Because, you know, the last thing they want after New Year's Eve is over. They don't want any wine in their warehouse, they want to sell it all off as much as possible, and having 10%, 10% more isn't good.
Speaker 1:
2:32
So what is this GH Mumbrut Grand Cordon Rosé Champagne all about? First of all, the Grand Cordon is a red ribbon or a slash that is awarded to the highest quality champagnes, and the bottle has this red ribbon across it and for the length of the bottle it's an indentation. It is really classy looking. You want to show off, you put your thumb in there and you go oh my, that's really nice.
Speaker 1:
3:03
I mean just the presentation, simple but effective, and what this is is mostly Pinot Noir, and a lot of it is from Grand Cru Champagne vineyards. And then you got Pinot Mouinet, and Pinot Mouinet is one of the three grapes. It's a red grape and then followed by Chardonnay. So a Blanc de Blanc wine is white from white. That's a Chardonnay wine.
Speaker 1:
3:33
A Blanc de Noir is a red-based one, and that could be Pinot Noir and Pinot Mounais. So what's a rosé Champagne has white juice, pinot Mounais has white juice, so they just pull the skins out of that and it's white. And that's why champagne looks like a white wine, but Pinot Noir has color to it. So what they do is they pull the skins like they would for many Pinot Noirs, because a Blanc de Noir is a white wine from red grapes. But they also ferment about 15% of the Pinot Noir on skins, which gives it tannins and that type of thing. But they don't want too many tannins because that's going to give it a richness that they don't want for champagne, which you want this length, and you just want this subtle cohesiveness of the wine. So they blend in from the white the skinless skin contact, no skin texture, pinot Noir in with that, and there you go. So you've got the red wine, kind of in a not the easiest way in the world to do it. It's something they only kind of do in Champagne France, though anybody else can do it, but it's kind of you're putting more effort into it. So there you go, and plus it's the second fermentation.
Speaker 1:
5:01
Pinot Noir is a ferment at once and then they bottle it. After they blend it, they bottle it and they put a little bit of yeast, a little bit of sugar in every bottle, put a temporary cap on it, turn it a quarter turn every three days for two years. The minimum is 18 months a year and a half. So this is six months over that. And the longer you have it in that bottle, the more the bubbles get incorporated, because the fermentation process, eating the sugar up, does give up carbon. It does give the bottles, but it's got nowhere to go. So it goes back into the wine and it also gives a creaminess because the yeast in there also adds that to the flavor. So after two years. So this is a legitimately nice champagne, better than nice. Mum's a great champagne house.
Speaker 1:
5:52
Go and have a sip. It's got great length, it's got crispness, it's got really nice fruits, touch of brioche to it, a little bit of crusty bread, a little bit of vanilla, great acidity. It's got length. It kind of goes on for a while and it kind of disappears from your mouth. It's Brut, which is a dry wine, but it's like the. Of all the dry designations, it's the sweetest, which might sound weird, but that's what I'm saying. But it kind of disappears in your mouth a little bit, which is good champagne should do. It should hit your palate and then kind of disappear A little bit different than a red wine which will you have this length and it kind of get chewy and stuff. No, this champagne, you shouldn't be doing that with champagne. This has this almost kind of disappears, not quite because it's not that dry. The drier the wine, the quicker it'll evaporate on your palate. But it starts to do that. That's a really nice thing, starts to do that. That's a really nice thing. Couldn't resist. Took another sip. It's got a really balanced, really nice flavor to it.
Speaker 1:
7:11
They did their GH. Mum's been around since the I think it's 1826. I mean, it's been around for a long, long time. I think it's going on its 200th anniversary in a couple of years and their rosé wine is from 1952. So that's a good long time too.
Speaker 1:
7:26
And they're kind of renowned for their rosés and their use of Pinot Noir, which is my personal favorite. I like I mean, I've never turned down a champagne-based Pinot. I mean champagne, but I kind of prefer the Pinot Noir, pinot Monet thing, and Pinot Monet is a grape you rarely see any other place other than other than champagne, but it's in a lot of the wines. You just don't know it. So this is the way I like it.
Speaker 1:
7:55
And at $25, half price champagne, that's the way I really like it. So there you are Look for bargains. Wine shops are going to want to get you in the door. They're going to be looking for different ways to go. Oh, look at that price. We should buy that. Remember it was $45 last month and now it's $20? We've got to go and get that. So there you go. This is Domain Dave, cheapwinefightercom. Three times a week we write up a review of value-priced wine, and half-priced champagne is value-priced and then we put it on the website CheapWineFightercom and we plug in the microphone and here we are right now talking to you and about to say adios, keep it cheap. Bye-bye, I've got a couple of days or so I've got a Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon inexpensive, one back to inexpensive. So, adios, keep it cheap and have a nice holiday. Adios, bye-bye.
