This Is My Blood: Veuve Clicquot Brut

Why is champagne considered celebratory? In about 30-seconds of research, it appears that the tradition first appeared in France, when, after the Revolution, champagne became a secular celebratory drink, in lieu of any religious traditions—it was a "holy water" in its own way. The tradition continued and spread. Because of the explosive carbonation, champagne is now seen to "overflow with abundance and joy, both visually and symbolically." In short: I don't feel like researching champagne in a beer-a-day column, but I will say that we had a lot to celebrate this morning, drinking mimosas with brunch:

• Everyone survived Thanksgiving and appears to be healthy so far (even though, yes, it can take a lot longer than this for symptoms to present themselves)
• We're in a new house (this is how we came to have the champagne in the first place, as it was a gift from our realtor)
• It was the first home-cooked brunch in the new home (survived new-griddle mishaps and a window angled so that the sun was blasting me in the face while flipping the pancakes)
• Willow had her first sip of juice (orange juice), and didn't like it at all, a reaction to which, for a myriad of reasons, we are overjoyed
• It's Christmastime, and the lit tree fits in our living room comfortably
• My birthday is on Tuesday, but both of us have work so we're doing some celebrating this morning instead
• Martha finally slept through the night... HAHA just kidding, we are celebrating her ONLY waking up twice, and we are celebrating being super tired but not tired enough to want to jump off the roof just yet
• This is my 500th drink of the year, which is around 817 servings of alcohol fewer than I had had at this point in 2019, and I'm on a good pace, most likely slipping into the end of the year with fewer than the 550 drinks goal
• Mimosas are fucking great

Cheers to being optimistic and celebrating all that we can.

NOTES

BEER: Veuve Clicquot Brut

STYLE: Brut Champagne

ABV: 12.0%

BREWED BY: Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin

LOCATION: Reims, France

PURCHASED AT: ??? (I assume the realtor has a closet-full of champagne for occasions like this)

PAIRED WITH: chocolate chip pancakes and bacon

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 500 (I drank a quantity of champagne that could fit into a regular glass, so I'm only counting this as one drink, but note that the champagne was spread out over multiple mimosas, since we wanted to use champagne flutes that we had received as a gift on our wedding day and never used before)