Drink
My lovely friend Sarah has flown into a filthy mard. "Get that repellent stuff out of my flat," she spits. "You are not ruining my birthday party by giving it to my friends." I am only offering to act as wine waiter for a bit. "People are thirsty," I suggest innocently. "Besides, they might like it."
But Sarah is convinced that I am trying to contaminate her elegant pre-dinner champagne session with cheap muck. Which I am. I am conducting a sadistic social experiment to see how the refined palates of young, attractive, middle-class professionals will react to the taste of a sparkling wine called Lambrini. Why? Because Rob Rishworth, marketing manager of its Merseyside manufacturers, has caused an uprising among those who buy it by saying that Lambrini is drunk by "lower-class women". Now, no one likes to be called lower class and the reaction among these Lambrinettas who feel tarred by Rishworth's brush is, "it's disgusting what this man has said". And so it is.
However, explaining all this to Sarah only fuels her fury. "I don't have lower-class friends and my friends don't drink lower-class wine," she strops militantly. But I want to know what my unsuspecting guinea pigs will think.
Accordingly, here I have two bottles of Lambrini. It is, according to its label, "a unique and exceptionally light refreshing perry produced only to the very highest of standards". We shall see.
A perry is a wine made from pears, and Lambrini (presumably so named to attract the Lambrusco market) is popular stuff, selling 24 million bottles a year in the UK. But until this morning I had never heard of it - which is why I think I might have a chance of passing it off as the latest it alternative to champagne. At £1.39 for a 75cl bottle, it is barely more expensive than a takeaway cappuccino, another fact I ought to have shared with Sarah, who is guarding empty wine glasses like a fearsome Pluto.
Foiled for the moment, my latest love and I steel ourselves and delicately sip our first mouthful. "Candyfloss," he winces. "Yeugh," shouts another friend whose attention we have attracted, "smells like old cheese dropped in wine." This is no good. I search for a victim unalerted to potential grimness.
As if by magic a young lawyer picks up one of my bottles and wanders into the kitchen. I spy from the doorway. He is filling his glass. He raises it to his lips. He imbibes . . . and within seconds he is at the sink, tipping the remainder away, relegating the Lambrini bottle to the empties pile and opening a finer wine in its stead.
Back in the lounge (or should I say drawing room?) Sarah has relaxed her guard. I take the opportunity to persuade a suspicious Miranda to fill the glass of her boyfriend, Mark, with Lambrini Bianco Dry. He is the perfect candidate, engrossed in conversation. We watch breathlessly. Eventually the Lambrini hits his tastebuds. His face twitches in surprise. He forces a smile. Behind my back he makes vomiting gestures to Miranda, pointing at his glass.
"Horrible, isn't it?" I suggest to allow him to be ruder. "It reminds me of the stuff they gave us at prep school if we did well on sports day," he concedes.
To a man and a woman, the rest of the room agree. They struggle desperately for kind words but all they can manage is, "It's very sweet" - even though most have been drinking the dry version. I press my articulate friend Claire further but she replies, "I don't know what else to say," sneakily exchanging glasses with someone else.
So perhaps Rishworth is right. The middle class don't seem to like Lambrini. But they are intent on being delightfully polite, desperate not to hurt my feelings or crush my faked enthusiasm for this new wonder-drink. But wait. There is Mark voluntarily reaching for the bottle. Is he too drunk to know what he is doing or has he undergone a Damascene conversion? It seems the latter, with elements of the former. "Quite nice, actually," he burbles sheepishly, "once you get used to it."
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