Council
flat kid made good, that’s me. I’m a good time girl, always have
been, and as everyone knows, you can’t have a good time without
champagne as your companion. Champagne for me is a wine alive with
memories, good and bad, just as its very appearance in the glass is
so very much alive when compared with other wines. The anticipation
of those tiny bubbles bursting to the top only to explode in a rich
yeasty aroma serves to lift my spirits, however low, along with them.
Despite
my modest upbringing, as soon as I began earning my own money I knew
what my priorities were, quality over quantity every time. For the
last 20 years never a day has gone by when I have not had champagne,
for I don’t drink mine, I ‘have it’ as one would a lover. The
ultimate seducer, I enjoy the silent ‘woosh’ as the bottle
reveals its intimate contents, not the loud ‘pop’ of the clumsy
and inexperienced, for by its very nature, this wine is mature and
knows what it’s doing. Only one glass mind, it shouldn’t be taken
for granted, for familiarity breeds contempt, and usually at 5pm.
After living in the Orient I gained the habit of an afternoon snooze
to recharge batteries, and what better way to wake them up than to
settle into a warm bath with a glass of champagne? No company mind
you, for the hour is my own to indulge and spoil, for if you can’t
spoil yourself, who can? Not for me the hoarding for ‘special
occasions’ or when guests come to stay, for what better thing is
there than champagne to turn every day into a special one? Something
only the decadent by nature can fully appreciate. Not any champagne
will do, for each has its own distinctive character. I find more
pleasure, for this is the nub of it, in discovering a little known
house, rather than indulging in the common touch of the big brash
house styles loved by lottery winners and football stars, who give
this king of wines a bad name by the very manner of their usage.
Champagne
is not something you can remain indifferent to, people generally fall
into one of two camps, the ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ brigade,
which suits me fine as there is nothing mediocre about me. Too many
of us are introduced to this exquisite beverage at family weddings or
functions, where in place of the ‘real thing’, for champagne,
thankfully, can only truly come from Champagne, one is treated to a
dubious imposter, no wonder the hoi polloi are left wondering its
virtues - all the more for me.
Living
in the USA, and too poor to afford the quality I crave, I volunteered
to pour at tastings, and to cook (for I was a chef then) for such
illustrious beings as Serena Sutcliffe and Michael Broadbent, just to
have the opportunity of maintaining my daily fix - for once you are
hooked you can’t let go. I can recall as if it was yesterday the
most memorable glass of wine I have ever imbibed, at a vertical
tasting in New York. We sampled every vintage since the first world
war - the ’21 was good but was beginning to lose its sparkle and
revert to the still wine from which it was made, but the ’47 was
truly magnificent and will remain in my memory for ever. I declared
at the time I would marry the first man who bought me a case, and
rather rashly meant it, despite the presence of the 11 typically
neurotic therapy seeking New Yorkers at my table, how foolish it made
me.
One
of my most treasured possessions is a champagne stopper, given as a
parting gift by a friend who fully understood my nature when I left
my first husband to travel around the world, what comfort it brought
me in the small hours of the night far from home in mosquito ridden
jungles, the evocation of more comfortable times past, and those to
come. Who knows, for tomorrow we may die.
Love
it, or hate it, like me, it’s in a class of its own. I am special,
shouldn’t you be too?
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