Champagne and other fizz ...

[Andy in Sig]

Cathryn have you ever tried ginger champagne - it's a cocktail, and is absolutely lethal. All you do is grate a load of raw ginger into a cocktail shaker, and mash it with a pestle so that the juice comes out. Then pour a shot of chilled vodka over the ginger per person. Give it a shake, and strain it out into the glasses. Then top it up with champagne...mmmmmm

There's a gadget you can get which saves you the mortar and pestle bit. It's a little bowl made by Kyocera out of some special ceramic. You peel your ginger and rub it on the raised spiky bits in the middle where the fibrous bits are retained by the spikes and the usable stuff collects in the ring around the sides. You've just got to be careful with your fingers when the ginger is nearly rubbed away: I once ended up with ginger a la blood.

 

[domtyler]

Yeah love the sparkly me. No one has mentioned sparkling reds though which is unusual. They are generally up there with the very best of alcy-holic drinks. The main problem is the speed with which a bottle can disappear.

 

[Fnaar]

Never understood champagne meself...now meths, there's a seductress I can talk to.....

 

[domtyler]

Never understood champagne meself...now meths, there's a seductress I can talk to.....

Tip, you can make meths fizzy simply by bubbling a whole can of butane gas through it. Simply divine!

 

[Cathryn]

Yeah love the sparkly me. No one has mentioned sparkling reds though which is unusual. They are generally up there with the very best of alcy-holic drinks. The main problem is the speed with which a bottle can disappear.

I really like sparkly red. Never quite sure what to make of it, but it's a really unusal treat!

 

[Nortones2]

Sparkling Shiraz is very weird. Ex-boss laid some on for the summer jolly: very odd indeed. And the wine.

 

[dangerousjules]

when i made the first million for the company i work for many moons ago they gave me a 1995 bottle of dom perignon, i've been sitting on this bottle for along time just need an excuse to crack it open. by the way i studied wines and spirits as a hobby about 13 years ago and the one thing that stuck in my head like glue was the saying that when opening a bottle of champagne it should sound like two lovers kissing! so when you see people popping the corks like they're on the f1 podium just remember the gentle escape of air from the bottle is how it should be done!