So I went to a liquor store the other day to get a dry champagne/sparkling wine for a friend to cook with. Assuming that 'sec' meant dry in French (I was pretty sure--sweet is sucre; I can't pronounce French worth anything but did take a French for reading class in graduate school), I picked that up and took it to the counter, asking the person to be sure. (I do not know anything about wine, which is funny, because I keep getting sent to buy it and other forms of liquor for various recipes). He didn't know. He asked the woman there. She thought it was dry, then asked the other guy, who insisted it was sweet, so we put it back and got the one that said, in English, 'Extra Dry', 'Brut' being extra, extra dry.
Well, it's been nagging me. You may recall my post on Adele Blanc-Sec, the comic book character. Her name means White-Dry. I was 90% sure I had read that. Now why I should remember that correctly given all the useful bits I would like to remember, I don't know. And granted, I was putting it with wine, a whole new arena. Anyway, it's been bothering me, so I looked it up and 'sec' is, indeed dry in French. Now of those three designations, the sec champagne was the sweetest (for more on describing sweetness of wine, particularly champagne, see the Wikipedia listing),with 'doux' being sweet champagne, so the guy was right that of the three options given, 'sec' was sweetest. But it didn't mean 'sweet'.
Anyway, the 'Extra Dry' was probably the way to go, but it's nice to know I was right after all about the meaning of the word. The funny thing about that day is I went to swipe a debit card and swiped my flexible spending card instead (which can only be used for medical expenses). It declined the transaction, rightfully so, so we were able to switch out the bottles without a refund. :) Somewhere, I'm probably being flagged at United Healthcare for trying to buy wine with an FSA card. :) Sorry about that! They were both blue.
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