Celebrating my new jab

IGOT the jab this week so I reckon the only thing I’ll be drinking this weekend is iced water with a twist of paracetamol. Famous last words, but I appear to have got away with relatively mild side-affects of feeling like I’m carrying a rucksack full of breeze blocks as well as the sort of “dead arm” lads would have ended up with during primary school horse play.

Do kids still give each other dead arms? A serious health and safety breach these days,

I’m guessing.

Thankfully my experience of mass vaccination programmes is quite limited, but I must say the operation at the SSE was pretty slick and bodes well for future pandemics.

Some days before I got my first dose of the Astrazeneca I had the pleasure of opening a bottle of Champers someone gave us at Christmas. I’m usually a little sceptical about supermarket Champagne, having found so many of them terribly, well, dry to the point of making you wince when you take a sip more than getting a needle in your arm.

This one, the Nicholas Feuillate Champagne, was a pleasant surprise mind you. It’s just as well as the wine cupboard was fairly bare, as was the Jersey account, so I find myself looking at a few bottles of sparkling gear that may well have sat there for ever had their not been a craving for something fizzy in ours.

As said, some cheaper Champagnes are a little too dry and, frankly, not much else, but this gear had the balance just right.

It wasn’t so much dry as taut, with an edge yes, but nicely rounded stone fruit and a smidgen of green apple flesh.

As well as the fruit, though, there was that nice yeasty, sweet fresh bap hit too and a hint of nuttiness.

It wasn’t quite as fine as a

Laurent Perrier I was lucky enough to get a bottle of once, but a more rounded, fulsome mouhtful.

The thing is we love our cheap and cheerful Cava – well we do in our house – it’s so easy and approachable with its pear drop fruit and just the right level of sweetness.

Champagne can appear austere. But this stuff was anything but and really struck a balance between being a nice focussed wine with a steely core and really very quaffable.

Just try to think up something to celebrate.

Champagne can appear austere but this stuff was anything but