A pleasant drinky!

Oh dear, what a lucky little person I am, despite all my well-publicised (by me at least...!) problems. Last night a good friend invited me to his home for a bite to eat - something simple - and a catch-up, as we hadn't seen each other for a while. He is a friend going back many, many years to schooldays but, almost equally importantly for a wine person like me, he has a decent cellar! In years gone by I originally advised on wine purchases and how to go about finding good stuff at decent prices, so I knew that the food would be simple but the wine a bit special.

I wasn't wrong, of course, as he suggested a bottle of champagne - one of my favourite drinks in the universe - that he still has a few bottles of, a Dom Perignon 1996. There had been a bit of bad luck with bottles of the same recently, so he wanted to make sure that some were still good and I was handy! What luck! Champagne, like any wine is a living thing and, especially with a twenty three year old wine, there is a risk that at least some of the bottles could have suffered, but ours had not; it was, in fact, a beneficiary of all the good that comes from ageing wine without any of the bad.

Our wine was simply stunning, delicately golden green in colour with good, quite vigorous for its age, mousse and fine bubbles, toasty and biscuity, subtle yet tasty, classy and long. I have never been in awe of Dom Perignon and am appalled at what people with more money than sense do with it in nightclubs the world over, but at its best it is a seriously fine wine to reliably savour. This is not the first fine bottle I have enjoyed - the rose is particularly good - but this one was just spot on in its classy subtlety and complexity, hallmark of good champagne. Chapeau!

Good champagne is not rocket science; rather, it involves nature being somewhat helpful, then unrelenting human attention to detail in the vineyard, the grape selection, the winery, the handling, the cellar. Champagne is a complicated baby and expensive to produce, but at its best it's worth loving to bits - this was one such occasion.

Dear reader, if only you had friends like mine... But then you probably wouldn't bother with reading my nonsense.