Sediment: Best New Wine Blog 2011? Tempus fugit...

So, Finalists in the Wine Blog Awards! Made it into the Best New Wine Blog category! Time for a celebration, then. Always a problem…

For CJ, any sparkling wine occasion is now another opportunity to offload some of his shoddy Cava. As he explained, the only way to make this drinkable is to lower its temperature virtually to freezing point. This renders its consumption similar to that of a Pentonville cocktail, the drink served to unpopular prisoners containing crushed glass. And many is the evening in CJ’s kitchen punctuated by the soft crumpf, not of a distantly torched car, nor of the combi boiler igniting, but of the contained explosion of another forgotten bottle of Cava within his freezer.

For PK, even celebration is surrounded by the usual sociological anxieties. It is almost painful for him to remove any bottle from his cellar, let alone a bottle of champagne. Of course, being PK, the champagne has to be Winston Churchill’s Pol Roger – not actually Winston Churchill’s, but you know what we mean. And it has to be opened in the correct manner, holding the cork with the left hand and twisting the bottle with the right, emitting the gentle pfft which he insists he was told should, successfully executed, be the sound of a duchess farting.

Both learnt how to celebrate outside the Examination Schools in Oxford, too many years ago, when those leaving their Finals were greeted like Formula One racing drivers with a veritable monsoon of champagne. Such celebrations are now banned; in fact, students are forbidden even to carry past Schools any thing or substance which they might “throw, pour, spray or apply”. Oh, but we know how to apply champagne…

However, the moment of celebration has not quite arrived – because the voting is still going on, but closes on Monday, and we need your vote. If you do enjoy Sediment, and think we deserve to win this award, please do go here before Monday 27th and vote for us in category 7. Time, like CJ's Cava,  is finally running out.

Whatever the outcome, thank you for all the kind congratulations and comments. Either way, the results in a month’s time will be a champagne occasion. As Churchill said, in victory you deserve it – in defeat you need it.

 CJ & PK