Best Champagne... for a shower?

[markovitch]

So I am trying my darndest to finish my thesis and graduate from college. If and when that happens, there is a crazy celebration where all the graduates turn in their theses, burn old drafts in a huge bonfire, march through the library banging on drums, and most importantly, shower each other in Champagne.

I'm just curious what y'all oenophiles would suggest. Obviously, cheap is good.

the brand of choice from previous years has been Cooks (ugggghhhhh)

---peace, from the prince of procrastination alliterating away days of deadlines

[Jason Perlow]

I'm going to say any $7 prosecco is probably going to be better than Cooks.

[winesonoma]

Cheapest you can find. Better to drink later.

[abadoozy]

Depending on where you live, you can get Domaine Ste. Michelle for between $8 and $12/bottle. It's hands down the best widely distributed inexpensive champagne on the market, IMO. Around here - the Frozen Northern Wastes - it's available in the grocery stores.

Gruet, out of New Mexico, is also quite good, but a little more expensive and may not be available everywhere.

[jrt]

I'm going to say any $7 prosecco is probably going to be better than Cooks.

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No doubt about it. Zardetto's is an easy to find, < 10$ brand that is quite drinkable.

[markovitch]

what about stick/stink factor?

i was hoping you all would get into the absurd and ancillary sides of wearing wine :)

[Tess]

Depending on where you live, you can get Domaine Ste. Michelle for between $8 and $12/bottle. It's hands down the best widely distributed inexpensive champagne on the market, IMO.  Around here - the Frozen Northern Wastes - it's available in the grocery stores.

I just bought some for $6.99 in the Chicago area! Whenever it goes down that low I pick up a few bottles to use in cocktails and stuff. Really very good for under $10 although I don't care for it enough to drink a glass straight.

[ivan]

Cook's is not Champagne, no matter what they print on the label.

If it's really going to be poured over your head, I would definitely choose something that comes in super-extra-brut -- the sugar in a sweet wine will cause your eyelids to stick.

[racheld]

What a great thread!!!! And Ivan, I wish I could tell you about the time my hubby broke the 7 gal carboy of just-begun homemade champagne against the toilet, and the bathroom was invaded by ants. Sticky, indeed.

rachel

ps. maybe somewhere in an obscure oenological reference, there's a bit on "Wine to Wear."

[peppyre]

Baby Duck!! I think it's $5 here.

[ivan]

What a great thread!!!!    And Ivan, I wish I could tell you about the time my hubby broke the 7 gal carboy of just-begun homemade champagne against the toilet, and the bathroom was invaded by ants.    Sticky, indeed.

rachel

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Rachel, I'd love to hear that and any other story your husband may have about making sparkling wine. I took a (still-active) hiatus from home-wine-making just as I was beginning to contemplate making some. Did he go all-out, freezing and disgorging sediment from bottles? That's the daunting part (aside from accidents such as you mentioned). Encourage him to start a thread!

[racheld]

Ivan:

Hubby used to make a lot of wine and beer, studied a lot, etc., including accumulating all sorts of corks, labels, corking machines, bottle-cap smasher-on things...like that.

The most memorable was a VERY hot day in June. We were at our Alabama house, way down on the coast, when he decided it was a perfect Sunday afternoon to begin the "Christmas Champagne." All the literature had promised that the six months would be a perfect aging span to achieve a wonderful bubble-to-bottle ratio. (Our library of brewing/winemaking books had reached epic proportions by then---when he takes up a hobby, he STUDIES!!!).

We had a huge guest bathroom at the end of a long hall; cool, dark, quiet, it was seldom used except for extra guests, so he appropriated it as the perfect wineresting room. Even the labels, done in our daughter's perfect calligraphy, read, "Bainzimmer."

So, after Sunday lunch, I finished up the dishes while he measured, sterilized, stirred. He filled the 7-gallon bottle to the appropriate line, carefully wiped and dried the surface of the bottle, and started down that LOOONNNNGGG hall. I had offered to help, but there's no way two people could have grasped that huge glass heaviness and walked together. I watched from the kitchen as his little short legs started to bend and bow, as he got lower and lower, then turned the corner into the door.

I heard CLUNK!!! "S**t!!!!" Sploosh!!! and ran down the hallway to find the glass in several pieces, the floor flooded with several gallons of sugary, sticky syrup, and poor dear Hubby, standing regretfully, saying a fond farewell to the rest of the Christmas treat as it gurgled down the toilet.

He had swung too wide as he entered the door, whacked the bottle on the side of the (lid-up) toilet, and sent quite a few dollars' investment to a watery grave.

I ran for towels, he for the shop-vac. We got barefoot and waded into that sticky swamp; we slurped up two tanks full and stomped for hours. Pour on fresh water, vacuum that up; repeat. It lasted way on toward suppertime, and we kept at it til we thought maybe we'd cleaned it enough.

The next morning, the carpet was stiffening like those weird flower-baskets our Moms used to crochet, then "starch" into shape with simple syrup (My sister's episode of gnawing one into a shapeless, hideous heap just before the WMU arrived for an afternoon social is another story altogether).

By Tuesday, there was a decided "crunch" underfoot as you entered the door, and heretofore unseen splips and splashes of white crystalline flocking upon the wallpaper. The splatters succumbed to a thumbnail scrape, easy enough to remove, but there were THOUSANDS of them.

And then the ants came. They attacked that nylon carpeting like Orks on Rohan, climbing the stiff shocks of it, gnawing and sucking and taking away their winter rations. There would be lines of them on the wallpaper, each crunching up and carrying off great crumbs of grapey sugar. Since the room was so far removed from the rest of the house, we just closed up and let them have at it---and they CLEANED THAT ROOM. The wallpaper was restored to its pristine smoothness, needing just a washdown with Fantastic. The rug regained its former soft texture, needing only a shampooing to remove my aversion to walking on antspit.

And we had to BUY the Christmas champagne.

rachel