Pol Roger

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Let’s start the new era with a glass of champagne

From our UK edition

‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad,’ Madame Lily Bollinger (1899-1977) remarked. ‘Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory.’ As the last constituency results trickle in, we’ll all inevitably find ourselves in some combination of those four states. If you’re sad, I hope at least you have good company – and that you’re as well supplied with the great French spirit-lifter as I have been this week, with a busload of Spectator readers on a tour to Reims, Epernay and Aÿ. But I suspect you’ve also consumed more than enough media comment on the spectacle of second-rate politicians slime-wrestling, dog-whistling and lying about tax plans.

Thursday

Roger Kimball

Bubbles in paradise

I remember being taken aback when reading, in Geoffrey Madan’s delightful Notebooks, a cynical remark by Lord Lyons: ‘If you’re given Champagne at lunch, there’s a catch somewhere.’ Au contraire, my dear Lord. But then that same peer stated that ‘Americans are either wild or dull.’ Obviously he was an unreliable source. Lily Bollinger, former manager of the Champagne producer, admirably summed up my own view. ‘I only drink Champagne when I’m happy,’ she said, ‘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 if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it — unless I’m thirsty.

champagne