Drinks for Classy People Part 3: The Lambrini

In previous posts on Drink it How You Like it we’ve had features on two drinks that perhaps struggle under the weight of the preconceptions people have about them; Carlsberg Special Brew and BabyCham.

Carlsberg Special Brew is known as tramp juice, and is generally considered to be drunk by the homeless and hopeless alcoholics you might find on your local park benches and at bus stops (at 8.30am). I think the price is a bit beyond the means of most homeless when you consider there are many cheaper super strength lagers available, but perhaps it’s a special treat when they’ve come into some unexpected money.

BabyCham on the other hand is a massive girly drink. Everyone remembers it from the adverts in the 80s, but no one seems to drink it – presumably because its faux champagne image is a little off-putting.

Continuing in that theme then (I’m not sure what the theme is… Drinks for Classy People? Let’s call it that)… this week we’ll be looking at Lambrini. Why? It’s on Special Buy at Aldi.

in the bottle

At the conception of this post, I didn’t really know what Lambrini was. I assumed it was a kind of fizzy wine, and I knew that it’s target market was er… girls who just want to have fun, aged say 18-30 – like the holiday club, but presumably a little classier, judging by the girls in this advert. Some of them have jobs, some are doing responsible, adult things (like DIY – actually, it looks like they’ve finished the job. Good work!), and they’ve all learned a specific dance, which coincidentally is called The Lambrini. None of them look like scallies, none of them are wearing tracksuits or over-sized hoop ear rings, none of them are sitting at a bus stop with a pram, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of them in episodes of Boozed Up Britain, Ibiza Uncovered or Party Paramedics. These girls might be paramedics – except the ones that are obviously surgeons… dancing… surgeons. And since all they want to do is have fun, presumably they’re not interested in things like commitment or babies.

label

30 might be pushing it a bit, actually. You’d expect them to have moved on to wine by then. On a side note, one of my line managers buys this for her teenage daughter because “it doesn’t really count as booze” – though it actually does. She was a bit surprised when I told her its ABV. I don’t know why she never thought to look at the bottle.

A bit of internet research shows that Lambrini is actually ‘lightly sparkling perry’ (7% ABV), so very much like BabyCham, but a little less sparkling. BabyCham comes in tiny bottles (200ml), while Lambrini comes in a large bottle (750ml), not unlike those giant bottles of San Miguel that I’m so fond of.

There were two varieties on offer in Aldi, and while I had been intending to buy one of each, the potential for humiliation and the fact that Brenda said she wouldn’t be drinking much of it convinced me just to get one of the original variety. Luckily the guy at the checkout in Burnage’s Aldi store just swiped it through the scanner like a bus driver looks at a bus pass – in that he didn’t look at all. Thousands of pounds worth of merchandise pass through his hands and go beep every single day, and not one item - nor one combination of item and customer - can appear to him as interesting in any way. So thanks for that.

Lam-bree-ni! Do do-do do-do, Lam-bree-ni…

Seven percent. That’s not that weak, is it? It’s half the strength of wine, but it’s stronger than your average beer, so I guess one of these is enough to get a common-or-garden variety teenage girl nicely pissed for the evening. That sounds dodgy. I’m not a sex offender!

I was, of course, stupidly excited about beginning the latest round of research for the blog, so I cracked it open an hour or so in advance of going out to see the Jesca Hoop gig at the Academy 3. Brenda wanted to drive, so I was drinking alone.

Lambrini is looking at you

Well, what can I tell you? It was fine. Not as sweet as I imagined it would be, but when Brenda came to drink hers on our return, she thought it was very sweet. She said she preferred the BabyCham – presumably because it feels a bit more like drinking champagne. It does taste a bit cheap, but certainly nowhere near as offensive as those 3 litre bottles of cheap cider – White Lightning, Carbon White and the like – which for my money are the masculine equivalents of this. Compared to those, Lambrini is positively classy. And it comes in a glass bottle. Not too classy though; on my way home last night I saw two middle aged ladies sitting at the bus stop next to one empty and one mostly empty bottle of Lambrini. They looked to be having a nice time.

I wouldn’t buy Lambrini again (even at £1.99), but there were certainly no ill side effects, and it didn’t taste all bad. I’d just prefer to stump up the extra two quid and buy four cans of Holsten Pills.

So there you have it; certainly not a glowing review, but not a bad one either. It’s all about personal preference really, and I can’t imagine too many people preferring to buy this over a nice Chardonnay (women) or just… beer (men), but you know; it’s cheap and cheerful, and that’s got to stand for something.

---------------------------------------------------

Now! This weekend is the weekend of the Chorlton Beer Festival, and I was fully intending to go until I realised it was going to rain all weekend. There isn’t much joy to be had drinking ale with your feet in a puddle, and your hood up, listening to the constant pat, pat of raindrops. We’ll see how many people really like real ale there, won’t we? Except we won’t because presumably no one will be there to see how many people aren’t there. Stupid British summertime.

Well, have fun this weekend. I’ll see you next week with some more… something or other.

The Friday Post and... BabyCham! The Happiest Drink in the World!

With average booze blog comes great responsibility… for photographing bottles and cans like they are actual members of the family. I’ve taken more photos of booze since I started this blog than I took during my entire two weeks in Canada; a fortnight that incorporated Christmas, New Year and a wedding. 

 As a result of all these photos, I have started to notice the little messages that manufacturers include on their various receptacles.

The first was Carlsberg Special Brew’s, “Best shared well chilled”. I found that one funny – best shared. Because no one in their right mind would drink a can of Special Brew on their own, would they? And if they did, they certainly wouldn’t enjoy it. No. It’s far better to share it. A problem shared is a problem halved, they say. 

The point of Special Brew is that it is a big old can of strong lager. You’re going to buy it if you want to drink it – to yourself. Sure, someone else can be there, also drinking Special Brew, but they’re going to have their own and you’re going to have your own. If you’re going to share it, you may as well have bought the ordinary lager in the first place.

As for “well chilled”, well, that’s just good advice. 

The second little message I noticed was when Brenda and I bought a few bottles of BabyCham recently. I know what you’re thinking, but you know, I’d never tried it and I remembered the adverts from the 80s. Brenda had never heard of it, but it was on a documentary we were watching. We thought it would be fun to try it, and to write about it. 

I’ve mentioned before that Brenda is Canadian. What that means is that she is missing a lot of the cultural references that normal British people take for granted. She doesn’t know who Jimmy Saville was, she doesn’t know how good Only Fools and Horses is and she knows Ant and Dec, but not PJ and Duncan. All I’m saying is, if you’re playing one of those editions of Trivial Pursuit that focus on the UK from any time before 2001, you don’t want Brenda on your team. Ok? 

So she wasn’t aware of BabyCham, or indeed any of the adverts that were tattooed onto our brains during childhood.

I just did a quick phone test with Brenda:

ME: Brenda, can you tell me if any of these adverts mean anything to you?

BRENDA: Ok.

ME: The Milk Tray man.

BRENDA: No…

ME: Shake n Vac?

BRENDA: Yes.

ME: What does it mean?

BRENDA: I don’t know.

ME: Do you know the tune? [I sing the tune]

BRENDA: No.

ME: So how do you know it?

BRENDA: I’ve seen it! [she means on one of those nostalgic British TV shows like, “I love 1983” or something]

ME: What about Danny Baker’s Doorstep Challenge.

BRENDA: No.

ME: R White’s secret lemonade drinker?

BRENDA: What?

ME: [singing the tune]. What about Kia-Ora, “it’s not for crows!” and, “I’ll be your dawg!”

BRENDA: No.

So there you go. She almost got a point with Shake n Vac, but not quite. And she’d never heard of BabyCham.

Now, BabyCham is possibly the girliest drink there is. It’s perry (pear cider), and it comes in teeny-tiny little bottles. It’s like fake champagne – hence the name. However, across the top of the label is written, “The Happiest Drink in the World”. 

Quite a claim there. You sure about that? I’m not saying it’s not true, and I’m not even going to get into hardcore grammar policing but, what evidence can that possibly be based on? And what is the happiest drink in the world?

I would be tempted to say tequila, and that’s not just because it makes Tony from Terrorvision happy. It just is. It isn’t a maudlin drink, it isn’t ponderous, it’s just get-wasted-have-a-laugh-remember-nothing fun.

Or what about (real) champagne? That’s always drunk at happy occasions – weddings, lottery wins – and in films at least, the popping of a champagne cork is always greeted with a chorus of “Hooray!” You don’t get that at the click of a tequila cap being broken do you?

That champagne cheer thing is a bit of a private joke of ours. People don’t really cheer when a champagne cork pops in real life, but Brenda and I do, for fun. When strolling around Venice we heard a random champagne cork pop, and Brenda cheered out loud. I was in the middle of saying something, but I laughed heartily about it immediately after I’d finished talking. 

We need to get that joke out there, because I cheered when I opened a sparkling wine bottle for a friend at a party recently, and everyone just looked embarrassed and pretended it didn’t happen.

I’m rambling, but that was actually the most interesting thing I have to write about BabyCham. I can’t really imagine who buys it, but if you do; is it your happiest drink in the world? And if not, what is?

It’s sure been a long week, but it is the weekend again. Congratulations to everyone that made it [this far]. I don’t have any particular booze events going on this weekend, though I was thinking of doing a vodka taste test tonight. I have three different ones at the moment – the budget Tesco Imperial, Stolichnaya and the Russian Standard. I’ll probably get Brenda to pour them into three glasses, and I’ll work my way through. I know I like Stolichnaya, and the Tesco one is drinkable, but it will be interesting to see what the Russian Standard is like, and determine which is my favourite. Fun, fun, fun. I’ll probably try a couple of other drinks, too. 

Whatever you’re getting up to, have a good one and hopefully I’ll see you next week for another update (Monday), a post (Wednesday), and a look ahead to next weekend (Friday).

Product evaluation: Ice Balls!

I mentioned previously how my fiancée, Brenda bought me a bottle of Jura Superstition and a book about 101 Whiskies to try before I die for my birthday. Not everything she got me was booze related, but there was another thing – ice balls. You might have seen these before, or something like them. They are little plastic items, filled with liquid, that you stick in the freezer and use to chill your drinks – like ice, but they have the advantage of not melting, and therefore not watering down your drink. 

I don’t want to criticise Brenda’s gifts – it was certainly very thoughtful of her - but that’s pretty much the only advantage. I tested them out last night with a glass of Cointreau, and found one or two disadvantages. First, there were only six in the pack – you can stick as much ice in the freezer as you like – so with the ice balls you can only have two to three drinks before you’re back on ice.

Second, they don’t chill your drink as much as ice does, so you certainly wouldn’t be able to use them for making cocktails, and you lose the benefit of having an ice cold drink.

Finally, you have to wash them before you refreeze them.

 

Simply wash? You never have to wash ice, do you?

Well, they’ve thought of something for everything haven’t they? You like your drink cold, but you don’t want it watered down – ice balls. Possible alternative: stick your drink in the fridge?

I think Brenda got the idea when I complained that the ice was watering my single malt scotch down. Since then I’ve just learned to drink it neat – if it’s nice enough, you can. So I don’t really need the ice balls. If your whisky isn’t nice enough, then you probably don’t mind the ice watering it down a bit, so ice still wins for me.

Nevertheless, it was fun to try [I'm easily amused], and it was a good excuse to try Cointreau on its own, which I’ve never done before. I never realised it was a clear liquid – it comes in a dark orange bottle (or something), so I assumed it was orange coloured. Well, I never did!

So! It’s the weekend again, and this one promises to be another quiet one. Brenda and I have been on austerity measures since our return from Canada at the start of the month, so it’s been weeks of staying in. Brenda’s been studying, and I’ve been taking advantage of that by playing on the Xbox a lot. My budget has only stretched as far as 4 cans of beer on a Friday and a game of 5 a side on Monday.

It’s pay day soon though, and we have bigger plans for next week which I’ll tell you about then. For now, I have one or two booze related experiments in mind, but I can’t tell you about them just yet. Brenda has put in a request to try BabyCham tonight. Neither of us have had it before, but I remember seeing it advertised on telly in the 80s, so I’ll be making another trip to Levenshulme’s Tesco after work to see if they have any in. 

Have a great weekend, everyone. And enjoy yer booze.