Shaken and Stirred

I woke at 1.00am to find my bed quivering and wardrobe rattling. While coming too a bit more, I realised I was not in the duty free section of a cross channel ferry, but something strange was afoot in sleepy Cambridgeshire.

My bedroom felt like a Jenga tower near the end game, being played next to a herd of stampeding buffalo.

Luckily my worries of a resident poltergeist were swept away when I listened to the news this morning. An earthquake with the epicentre in Lincolnshire at 5.3 magnitude, the largest in the UK since 1984.

After checking my house for cracks my mind turned to the remainder of a case of 2000 Pomerol stashed under the stairs (the only quality wine I currently have with lots of sediment). I have heard of 'bottle shock', and 'travel shock' but not 'ground shock'. Believe it or not there are products out there like specialist racks designed to cope with earth tremors.
As an earthquake of this magnitude is only likely to occur every 20 years I will pass on the damping gadgets, I doubt very much that the lions share of my bottles like 'Tesco Value Valpolicella' will survive 20 weeks let alone years.

Yesterday there were small warning signs. No fleeing sheep or deer, but I should have listened to the normally placid neighbour's barking dog, and left an unmixed vodka martini next to my bed last night. The ultimate cocktail, shaken by an earthquake, one you could never have made to order. Great to calm the nerves at 1.00am. James Bond would be jealous.

I was reading the Sunday papers and noted an innovative cocktail creator called Eben Freeman. He is a molecular mixologist, the Heston Blumenthal of drinks. He started off looking after wine cellars and has clearly moved to more potent pursuits.

His latest creation 'The Mojito of the Future' looks like a freeze frame of a cocktail due to the gelatinous consistency. Green balls of frozen mint puree are suspended in time. I reckon if I watered my Aloe vera plant with Bacardi and ate the leaves it would be similar. Think I will pass on his Mojito, but at least it would stay in the glass if the ground moved.

Astronomical Measures

Maybe it's a sign of creeping years, but I bought a touring bike recently. I needed a commuting beast to withstand the rigours of the winter tracks and tarmac.

I wrote to the local farmer who graciously granted me the right to cycle off road across his land. The formal agreement I had to sign felt like something from the Middle Ages, I was a mere serf from the lower echelons appeasing the lord of the manor. It excluded the 'lord' liability from just about any misfortune that I might befall on his land.

I mounted my steed the other morning, and made my way up the farm track, casting that classic touring look, drop bars, panniers and sensible fluorescent strips. Touring bikes do have an image problem, but they are simply excellent (yes, I am also a Volvo driver).

The fog was lifting, and I was being careful not to fall off, as I would probably be scraped up by a tractor and fed to some hungry pigs. In the distance, out of the mist, the local radio telescopes started materialising. They looked like Regency goblets on a giant's dinner table, the angular geometric ironwork glinting like sharp cut crystal.

My mind wandered to a recent meal a local Italian restaurant. I had ordered a glass of red wine and this goldfish bowl appeared before me. A hideously large 250 ml of thick dark Montepulciano. You may as well have treated the stuff like beer and given me the bottle to swig. No respect. The huge glass could have doubled as a water tower for the local community.

The news in the UK is buzzing with talk of excessive wine measures, more worried about the alcohol consumption than the more salient point of killing the subtlety and enjoyment of wine. It is hard to find the friendly 125ml glass anywhere these days. I had a third of a bottle before me. The poor modest Montepulciano just wanted to be appreciated, not flagrantly splayed in such a bold, vulgar, profligate fashion.

Large glasses would not be so bad if the restaurants could measure lesser amounts into them, but wine should not me thrust from pillar to post, poured into some dirty measuring vessel prior to landing in a glass lagoon. You have to end up with a variety of those unpleasant plimsoll lines on the side of the glass, a bit like drinking a urine sample from a beaker.

The radio telescopes behind me I had safely negotiated the farm. My touring bike and I arrived at work looking like the homemade wonky windswept muffin (bloody fan assisted ovens), that I plucked out of my pannier to accompany my early morning cup of tea.

Dirty Dancing

I want to talk about bubbles. Those impossibly perfect packets of joy that make Champagne so beautiful.

They have a violent history, as Champagne bottles did not used to be so strong. Forgetting to wear an iron mask for trips to a Champagne cellar could be likened to walking into an inner city after dark without a stab vest. Thankfully a Benedictine monk called Dom Perignon helped design better bottles, and invented the metal cage keeping the cork secure.

I don't know about you, but whenever I take the cage off the cork, my eyes start to water, like I just have pulled the pin from a hand grenade.

So how do you get the bubbles into quality Champagne?

You basically add some yeast and sugar to the bottle and put on a crown cap. This promotes secondary fermentation, and therefore carbon dioxide. You leave the bottle for at least 15 months which produces lots of detritus.

To remove the muck, the bottle is subjected to an eccentric process called riddling. It involves clever dance choreography slowly forcing the sediment to the neck of the bottle, where it is frozen and removed. Often a little sugar is added at this point, just before the cork is applied.

The carbon dioxide is mostly dissolved in the liquid due to the bottle pressure, producing some carbonic acid. It is rudely awakened once the bottle is opened as the pressure is released. It finds itself in a glass and has an overwhelming urge to get out of the liquid. It gathers in unruly crowds either where the glass surface is irregular, or on dust particles. Once enough molecules have assembled a bubble forms caused by nature's remarkable surface tension phenomenon. When large enough it rises to the surface, contributing to global warming in its own modest way.

The stinging sensation you get on your tongue is not due to the bubbles bursting. It is actually lots of miniscule burns caused by the carbonic acid. I think I will throw my Listerine away and gargle with vintage Champagne in future, it sounds much more fun.