Napa's Golden Girls
• With California's 2012 harvest in full swing, we've been keeping track of harvest parties, and Napa's Round Pond seems to be leading the way. This season they've been saluting Olympic athletes, both current and ancient. With several wine tanks already named for bikini-clad Olympians Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings, Round Pond hosted actual bikini-clad ladies last week when the NBA's Golden State Warrior Girls cheerleaders squad showed up for a photo shoot of the 2013 Warrior Girls calendar (available this December on Warriors.com). We reached out to Round Pond winemaker Brian Brown to ask how the winery scored such a skimpy coup: "Listen, I didn’t have anything to do with this," Brown said. "I’m not complaining though." We wouldn't either.
"Take back this stirred martini. I'll have Champagne, disgorged, not shaken."
• James Bond is famously a martini man; by one count, he orders 35 throughout Ian Fleming's novels. But he's actually not a one-drink man: Like any secret agent worth his license to kill, he adapts in difficult situations. He orders both vodka and gin martinis, and has even been known to accept one stirred, as not to offend the host. Onscreen, however, 007 is particular about his Champagne, and the latest Bond caper, Skyfall, set to debut later this year, marks the 13th film and 39th year in which Bollinger is the cuvée of choice. Bond developed the taste in 1973's Live and Let Die, and the marque is even releasing a "Bollinger 002 for 007" bottle to celebrate Bond's 50th anniversary of being in a completely hopeless situation that surely there's no escape from but then at the last minute he finds a way out of the exploding volcano fortress (You Only Live Twice), throws the bad guy into a printing press (Tomorrow Never Dies) and winds down in an expensive château suite with a beautiful woman (all of them). It's a life.
• As promised, Unfiltered is monitoring which sparkling wines are favored by each of Major League Baseball's post-season-bound teams. As we reported last week, the San Francisco Giants celebrated with Mumm Napa, the Cincinatti Reds popped Korbel and the Atlanta Braves opted for Chateau Ste-Michelle Brut. This week, Korbel was again the choice of the Washington Nationals when they clinched the N.L. East division. The New York Yankees opted for Mumm Napa last night. The Oakland Athletics celebrated their A.L. West Division win with Domaine Chandon. The Detroit Tigers sprayed bottles of Fre Brut sparkling wine from California, which clocks in at less than 0.5 percent alcohol. The Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers declined to pop anything after finishing second to the Yankees and A's, respectively, but both secured a wild-card berth; they'll surely have chilled bottles on hand for their play-in game. We're still not sure if the St. Louis Cardinals celebrated their wild-card berth or not, but they toasted their entire run to last year's World Series win with Cook's Brut. That leaves Mumm Napa and Korbel in the MLB post-season lead, with two teams each. Stay tuned for more post-seaon pops as the playoffs roll on.
