175 Bottles Post 05: Post 5: Happy New Brut!
Wine: Finke’s Sparkling Brut
Ah, New Year’s Eve! I grew up in the Soviet Union, where NYE was a repository for all things formerly Christmas, so as a child I associated it with the decorated tree, the gifts, even a Russian version of Santa Claus. For more about this topic, you might want to take a look at my other blog, Songs and Remembrances. As a teenager in America, I envisioned NYE as a fantasy – sparkly clothes, dancing, balloons falling from the ceiling – none of which I actually ever experienced. More often than not, I ended up babysitting my younger brother on NYE, while my parents and their friends drank their way from the old year to the new one.
The year I was sixteen and my brother was eleven, my family took a car trip from our home in Spokane, WA to Los Angeles, where my mother had a cousin who had a husband and two young daughters. My main sensory memories from that trip were the smell of Dove soap and the weirdness of seeing smog, gray and orange in the light of early morning, hovering in the air throughout the city, thick enough to reduce visibility to maybe 100 yards. Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed.
I had very much hoped, to be invited to the NYE party the adults were having that year. Instead, they put on their best clothes and took off, leaving me to babysit not only my brother, but the two little girls, plus a couple more kids thrown into the mix by their parents. Nobody thought to talk to me about it, much less pay me, and I spent a miserable evening feeling very sorry for myself.
As an adult, I have attended my share of NYE parties, worn sparkly clothes and even costumes for themed parties, danced, drunk champagne, and stumbled home in the wee hours. I won’t lie. Those were fun times! But over the last few years, my husband and I set aside the noise and crowds in favor of our own living room, choosing to hang out quietly, watch the cheesy NYE “celebrations” on TV, count down as the ball dropped in Times Square, toast the new year with a glass of something bubbly and give each other a NYE kiss, then go to bed.
This year, we planned on watching the Ohio State vs. Miami game, so when friends invited us out for dinner, we regretfully declined and spent the evening watching the Buckeyes lose a bowl game before switching to the NYE coverage in Times Square and Las Vegas. We laughed, as 50 Cent performed In da Club to an audience who sang along to every word, which made me feel old, then marveled as Diana Ross took the stage in NY to perform a medley of her hits, commanding the stage like the boss she is, which made me feel inexplicably young. I’ll admit I worried for her safety, as she strutted and even did a couple of hops, but she never missed a single precise disco beat.
About fifteen minutes before midnight, we opened the sparkling wine of the evening, Finke’s Sparkling Brut. The website insisted that this Italian wine should be drunk to celebrate everyday occasions, such as Wednesdays and not burning dinner, but rebels that we are we decided to use it to ring in the new year, instead. The website also describes it as effortlessly elegant and easy to drink. I don’t have the slightest idea what makes a wine elegant and what the opposite of an elegant wine tastes like. Is it bitter? Do the bubbles burn going down? No clue. This one was very easy to drink, though, with a slightly floral, warm flavor, which was lovely. We drank the whole bottle and then went to bed. I even forgot to take a picture of it in my glass, but here are the glasses we use every year. Maybe we’ll pop another bottle the next time I roast a chicken for dinner. On a Wednesday. Anyway, here’s to the new year!
