No need to foam at bubbly's price

Dec 8 2006 By Helen Savage, The Journal

It was the late, great Lily Bollinger who gave the definitive advice about when to drink Champagne: "I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it when I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty of course."

Unfortunately, as most of us haven't had the good fortune to inherit a leading champagne house, the ready availability of fine champagne is more limited. Probably you're like me and save it for special celebrations, for if I'm honest, I don't want Champagne be an everyday drink.

While some things in life seem more special just because they have to saved up and waited for, champagne is not the only sparkling wine. You can easily afford to fizz up your life if you look south to Spain or other, further-flung vineyards. This Christmas Spanish Cava can be picked up in the supermarket for less than three quid and some big name Australian bubblies don't cost much more. Mix them with freshly-squeezed orange juice and you'll have a treat. Try them too with a dash of fruit liqueur - especially the classic blackcurrant cassis. I've never quite seen the point of adulterating a really fine champagne in this way.

Bubbly isn't just a drink for sipping on its own. Top champagne can be one of the most stunning wines to enjoy with and through the meal, and a sweeter (demi-sec) champagne is, as the French themselves know well, often a stunningly good partner for the sweet course.

The habit of serving a dessert wine with the pud is a decidedly Anglo-Saxon affectation. Special as champagne can be - and perhaps should be - the astonishing half-price supermarket bargains have tarnished its luxury image a little. Take, for example, Tesco's André Carpentier champagne, on offer at a mere £9.99 (and even cheaper if you want to buy a few more bottles of wine at the same time).

It's not bad at all - light, crisp, not too dry and with a fresh apple-like smell and taste; but just try a genuinely fine champagne alongside it and you'll be reminded just what a miraculously wonderful drink champagne can be. I was lucky enough to share a bottle of Laurent Perrier Brut Vintage1997 last week (around £32 at Oddbins, Majestic and Thresher).

This superb wine is in a totally different league with its incredibly elegant, complex, toasty smell and luxuriously creamy, persistent, lemony fruit. If you can afford it, try drinking it with simply grilled, utterly fresh fish. It's a blissful combination that, for me, is almost unbeatable.

I love the rich, biscuity or toasty smell of a champagne that's been aged a long time in the bottle on the fine yeast deposit left after its second fermentation (the one that makes it fizzy). But if the base wine has a strongly fruity character, many winemakers believe that it's better kept that way.

A good example is Brown Brothers classic blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier (£9.99 at Waitrose). It's ripely fruity with lemon and peachy flavours, easy drinking, most attractive, nothing at all like the Laurent Perrier Vintage, but a serious competitor for the more basic cheap and cheerful champagnes.

It's not impossible, however, to find champagne with true style and complexity - even away from the supermarkets. That great little wine shop Rothbury Wines, for example, have a special offer on their Hervieux-Dumez Premier Cru Champagne at £14.95. It has no lack of toasty complexity. A comparatively rich, flavourful bubbly, it would be a very fine food wine indeed - and a bargain.

Champagne, wonderful as it is, does not quite have the monopoly of the fine fizz market. The most exciting challenge to its supremacy is, you may be pleased to know, home-grown. English sparkling wine can be seriously good. At £13.49 (in Sainsbury's) Chapel Down Century Extra Dry has good clean apple-like fruit and some biscuity complexity. Despite the name it's not really very dry. Better still, the amazing Nyetimber 1998 (£24.99 at Majestic or £19.99 if you buy 2 bottles) is the best alternative to champagne I've ever tasted. Fenwick's stock it too.