Champagne Chronicles

My family is wonderful. Yes we may be middle-class, drink too much Champagne and occasionally be politically incorrect but my family is wonderful. If one person is celebrating, we are all celebrating especially if there’s Champagne and a fresh bottle of Pinot Noir involved. On one, or several, Boxing Days, Tequila has been also been on the table, the floor and spilt down at least three shirts along with the Champagne and Pinot Noir. Legendary is not a word I use often, but I can say with great certainty, that may family is, and always will be, legendary.

I had my first sip of Champagne at the ripe old age of nine, but it would take eleven more years for me to spell it correctly and six years for me to appreciate the taste of it. The earliest memory I have of tasting Champagne is absolutely hating the fizziness and, according to my mother, I pulled ‘the most wonderful nose squidgelled faces’. From a young age, I began training on how to be a connoisseur and how to pick out the fruity overtones, vanilla and floral aromas of wines I cannot pronounce even now. My father would usually come out with a slow impressed ‘good’, raise his eyebrows and give several approving nods whenever I specified the correct floral note, or when I said it tasted like an alcoholic Ribena. Sadly, my trained tastebuds and nose have dulled throughout the years of teenage drunkenness. After my first lukewarm boxed wine and tent-temperature Carling lager at a festival, my tastebuds were well and truly numbed.

During family occasions, along with my official role of wine taster, I oversaw the canapes. Smoked salmon pinwheels, homemade cheese straws and Kettle crisps that were on offer in Waitrose with a guacamole made by Uncle John, were the family favourites and, coincidentally, they were also my favourites. I grew up on a diet of sophisticated party nibbles. My favourite part of nibble distribution, though most of my family will tell you otherwise, is not the ability to eat the food before anyone else has a chance. The abundant conversation excited me most and still does to this day. In one corner, sat my grandma talking about her embroidered pomegranate scissor holder she painstakingly made and, in another, my grandpa delightfully explaining how to get the best rise on a homemade loaf after using his new bread machine once. I found it amazingly satisfying, being the teenage liberal hooligan, to join in on discussions about politics. However, it is difficult to have an engaging and constructive argument while handing out nibbles. Other apparently intriguing topics of conversation involve fishing, golf and newly introduced great grandchildren. Though none of these interested me, the nibbles pilled up on my plate kept me thoroughly entertained.

In every family there are many inside jests that sound bizarre to a passer-by and, when explained, do not seem funny at all. In 2012, we embarked on a long-awaited trip to Edinburgh Fringe festival, laden down with Champagne, fruit pastels and out of date maps. A dream for keen theatre goers like ourselves awaited us. There were street performances, puppet shows for kids and puppet shows for adults — or fifteen plus as the poster says. The ventriloquist, Nina Conti, astounded us all. Her puppeteer skills, pithy comedy and stage presence enthralled my twelve-year-old self who had never experienced anything like it before. One of the marvellous ventriloquist dummies, a rescue Pitbull called Killer, had found himself lost in Claire’s Accessories while searching for his brother Joshy. After the trek back to our rented apartment, and a few glasses of Champagne, we gleefully remembered that my cousin Scarlett’s boyfriend is called Josh. This led to all of us having the image in our heads of a grown man getting lost in Claire’s and decorated in everything pink. At a later dinner, Scarlett and Josh were over for dinner and, to our hilarity, Scarlett referred to Josh as Joshy which solidified the image for everyone.

Many know the deadly Tequila slammer, but we have a Boxing Day tradition of the Tequila slider. For this to work effectively you need three vital things:

· Lime

· Salt

· Tequila

A sense of humour and a flat surface is advised but not compulsory. At one end of the breakfast bar, you need a tipsy willing participant, salt ready somewhere on their hand and lime within reach. At the other, my dad giving the final instructions on what to do, ready to slide the shot of tequila down the bar. The aim is to lick the salt before the shot reaches you then grab the shot, preferably before it shatters on the floor, drink it and finally suck on the lime as if your life depends on it. Or you could be like my grandad and have the salt, lime, shot then another lime. The possibilities are endless. My dad, being the adult-sized teenager he is, will jump at a chance to show his prowess at this refined and unusual sport. Naturally the other adult-sized teenager, Uncle Gaz, hijacked the role of being the shot pourer and the shot slider. I have never seen my dad pull a grimace like that, other than the time he ate a blue cheese and apple pie.

This blue cheese and apple pie, eaten and promptly spat out, marked the final leg of our Tour de France. Our entire trip had been planned based off the best wine tasting experiences and, being seventeen and in Europe, I happily joined in. I lost interest relatively quickly with smelling, swilling and swallowing the countless red, white and pink wines that seemed to be magically appearing in front of us. The showmanship of the French people and their wine can only be described as slick and stylish. The empty glass will be whisked away with another gleaming glass promptly placed with an explanation of the sweet notes and fruity aroma, apparently completely different to the wine we just tasted. A particular vineyard’s pink Champagne delighted our tastebuds as did the small elderly terrier who seemed just as interested in the Champagne as we were. Filled to the brim with pink Champagne for my eighteenth birthday, and nearly a small elderly terrier, the campervan seemed a lot heavier as we continued our journey.

A useful tip I have learned, is to suggest to your dad that a pint of Rattler cider before you go shopping for skateboards is a good idea. I can also recommend having a cheeky half pint yourself as he will most likely pay for the cider, and my rule is to never say no to a free drink. Every year, my family travel down to a gorgeous, homely seaside village in North Devon, Croyde, and each year we see kids of various ages scooting around campsites on penny boards having the time of their lives. So of course, I batted my lashes at my parents to see if I could find one of these funky coloured boards because I too wanted the opportunity to fall off and scrape my knee on gravelly concrete. Thus, our quest for a penny board began, after a quick dive into a sweet bar for a cider. I tried out a penny board and it was hard to tell whether I was struggling standing up on the board because of the slippery pavestone floor underneath or the half pint of Rattlers that had gone straight to my head. Either way, we thanked the assistant at Salt Rock and made our way to a local surf shop with the ingenious name of Croyde Surf Shop. After what seemed like hours, we arrived back at the campsite with a rather hefty looking long board, much bigger and sturdier than the penny board I had in mind. After a couple more beers from the campervan fridge and a glass of Champagne, we ended up pushing each other about on the skateboard and being ‘completely silly’, as my mother said. I do not understand why she never wanted a go. Nevertheless, we ended our Croyde camping trip like all the rest with a toast of Champagne, stood atop a sand dune with the fading sun falling below the horizon casting orangey hues across our sun-kissed faces.

When my family make a toast, it is done with the upmost sincerity. Every glass must be clinked even if it takes years, for sometimes there are a lot of us, and only after the clinking is finished can we drink. It is no joke. During my younger years, my cousins and I would have great fun pretending we were classy and drinking wine rather than Ribena with our pinkies high in the air. Now we are no longer six or seven, I can clink glasses with cousins Rose, Lily and Liam and laugh along with a not so understandable joke our grandpa made. Some families do a mud-covered obstacle course, play golf with their dad or go backpacking in Central America without having a sip of Champagne. For my family, Champagne is a necessity wherever we go.