The title of David Lough’s riveting new account of Winston Churchill’s financial affairs, No More Champagne, relates how he lived his entire life on a fiscal knife-edge. Recurring, urgent economies rarely touched, however, his heroic consumption of champagne: he famously drank Pol Roger with every meal (and much else in between). The book’s title may be ominous. Only a year ago this column lyricised about champagne as the undisputed celebratory drink of choice: but as the new year begins, change is apparently afoot, in Britain at least. In 2014, we Brits for the first time spent more on Prosecco than champagne – £181.8 million as against £141.3 million. It’s highly probable that more glasses of Italian rather than French sparkling wine were raised
07 January 2016, The Tablet
Sparkling new year
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