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Cristal"Last Czar"Cuvee
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Cristal »Last Czar »Cuvee

Original price was: $1,175.00.Current price is: $1,125.00.

Cristal is the flagship cuvée of Champagne Louis Roederer, created in 1876 for Alexander II, tsar of Russia.

in popularity with the Russian nobility from 1855 onwards. An especially popular brand was Louis Roederer’s, who shipped a third of his production to Russia.

Cristal was first created for Alexander II of Russia, and is viewed by many as the first prestige cuvée.

As the political situation in Russia at the time of his rule was unstable, the Tsar feared assassination. *

Thus when he visited Paris in 1867 for the Exposition Universelle, the Tsar ordered that champagne bottles for the lavish dinner he hosted for the Prussian King Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (later termed the Three Emperors Dinner) be made clear, so that he could see the bubbles and also to prevent an explosive being hidden beneath them, as could happen with a typical dark green indented bottle.

Louis Roederer commissioned a Flemish glassmaker to create a clear lead glass Champagne bottle with a flat bottom. The Champagne has since become known as « Cristal ».

The wine was not commercially available until 1945.

In the mid 1990s to early 2000s, hip hop music discovered the brand, with several artists referencing the drink in song lyrics and as part of their public image, including Raekwon, 50 Cent, The Notorious B.I.G., R. Kelly, Diddy, Big L, Jeru the Damaja, Trina, and Jay-Z. Those in hip hop sometimes used the nickname « Crissy » for the drink.

Tupac Shakur created a cocktail called « Thug Passion », which is a blend of Alizé Gold Passion and Cristal.

In an interview with The Economist in 2006, Louis Roederer managing director Frederic Rouzaud said he viewed the attention from rappers with « curiosity and serenity. » Asked if he thought the association would harm the brand, he replied, « that’s a good question, but what can we do

We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business. »

Subsequent interpretations and reactions to these statements resulted in those associated with hip-hop culture disengaging from the brand. Jay-Z, for example, released a statement saying he would never « drink Cristal or promote it in any way or serve it at any of [his] clubs ».[8][9][10] The loss of position in hip hop and Jay Z’s statement had no effect on sales of Cristal; output doubled from 400,000 bottles in 2004 to over 800,000 bottles in 2010.

Production

The 1974 vintage was the first release of a rosé Cristal.

The grape composition is an approximately equal blend of Chardonnay and Pinot noir, while the rosé contains more Pinot noir, and is coloured with red wine via the saignée method rather than by the Pinot noir grape skins.[1] The 2000 vintage was 55% Pinot Noir and 45% Chardonnay, with a dosage of 10 g/L.[4]

Cristal had an annual production run of 300,000 to 400,000 bottles in the early to mid 2000s but that had doubled to 800,000 bottles by 2010.

Since 2012, all vintages of Cristal champagne are produced entirely from Demeter-certified, biodynamically-farmed fruit, which is a landmark for Maison Roederer.

Collaboration

In November 2024, it was reported that Singapore Airlines will be the sole airline serving Cristal 2015 champagne beginning 1 December 2024, through an exclusive agreement with Louis Roederer.

The wine, blending 40% Chardonnay and 60% Pinot Noir, is crafted by Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon.

The ingredients are sourced from 45 vineyard plots across Louis Roederer’s seven Grands Crus

Category

Description

The Last Czars is a six-part English-language docudrama that premiered on Netflix on July 3, 2019.

The series follows the reign of Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia’s Romanov Dynasty, from his accession to the throne in 1894 to his execution along with the Romanov family in 1918

The format of The Last Czars is a mixture of dramatisation, with lavish costumes and sets, alongside contemporary photographs and movie-reel footage, and talking heads, including Simon Sebag Montefiore, Dr Pablo de Orellano of King’s College London and Dr Philippa Hetherington of University College London. So far, so interesting…

A ‘mature content’ warning flashed on screen at the beginning, and I assumed it must refer to the violence associated with the Revolution and the brutality of the family’s execution in an Ekaterinburg basement. But no! Early on, the sex scenes begin. We see Nicholas and Alexandra undressing each other on their wedding night then writhing naked on the imperial bed.

And once Rasputin arrives on the scene, it turns into a shagfest, with orgies by the score. I almost feared they were going to have Rasputin and Alexandra humping against a palace wall, as satirists at the time portrayed. It stopped short of that, but did show her leaning her head on his shoulder and embracing him in ways the austere Alexandra, ever-conscious of her position, would never have countenanced.

In the final episode, it shows Maria, the tsar’s third daughter, caught stripping off with a guard in the Ipatiev House. This is based on a tiny footnote in history, which inspired a scene I include in my novel The Lost Daughter. The guard in question, Ivan Skorokhodov, is said to have brought Maria a birthday cake in June 1918. She went out to the passageway to thank him and was caught in what the commandant of the guards called “compromising circumstances”.

Maria was deeply religious, and a tsar’s daughter: at most, this might have involved a kiss. To portray her eager to have sex with a lower-class guard is taking several liberties too far. I’m sure Simon Montefiore would not have approved such a scene but you can imagine a studio exec looking at the original shooting script and saying “We need more sex. Where can we spice it up?”

Poster for the 1971 movie, based on Robert Massie’s book, starring Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman

I wish just a part of the budget they spent on glitzy palace sets, crown jewels, period cars and location filming in Vilnius, Lithuania and Rundale, Latvia, had been spent on better scriptwriters.

The dialogue is clunky and ‘on the nose’. “Telegram the head of the duma. Tell him he can have what he wants,” says Nicholas after the 1917 Revolution. And the F-word is used often: “We cannot afford any fuck-up,” says Yacob Yurovsky to his execution squad. I yearned for the quality of writing found in The Crown. The story of the Romanovs is tragic and compelling, and it’s been under-served by dramatists since the 1971 movie Nicholas and Alexandra.

On the whole, the history in The Last Czars is accurate, although the (Russian state-owned) Russia Beyond website lists its “48 most glaring mistakes”. Some characters have been stripped out, presumably to avoid over-complicating the story: this is particularly notable in the execution scene, where only Dr Eugene Botkin joins the family and not the other three servants we know were present

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