I'm writing this column from the comfy new couches at an air-conditioned Napier airport on a day that the weather boffins have predicted will hit 30-plus degrees.
Updates on Facebook are flooding my feed with photos from the dashboards of friends' cars with outside temperatures of 34C and climbing. I'm scared to go outside. On one hand I'm cursing not having chosen more in the way of natural fibres to wear around my nether regions and on the other I'm fizzing with excitement because it means another sunbaked summer is on its way.
There'll be boxes of juicy, heady-sweet nectarines being bought from roadside honesty boxes, that ever-present soft emery feeling of grains of sand in your bed on the weekends and we'll be buying a season key to the local primary school pool to cool off during the week. I'll slather my children in sunblock but will no doubt forget to do myself and that'll result in the annual clumsy tan lines gleaned from ill-fitting singlets, which have haunted me all my life.
But when it comes to my summer wine, old habits die hard, and for me it's not summer without great bubbles and it's about now I start stocking the fridge so that there's always something flash in the fizz department to serve my friends.
While Champagne is one of the wonders of the world, there's no need to re-mortgage the house. There are superb examples coming into the country for under $60, like De Castelnau Rserve Brut NV $59, the H. Lanvin et Fils Brut NV $50 and the Drappier Carte Blanche Brut NV $50. They're exceptionally good, but also look for good Cremant, great French bubbles at a fraction of the price like the Louis Bouillot Cremant de Bourgogne $23, Grande Cuvee 1531 de Aimery Brut $22 and J. De Villaret Cremant de Loire Brut Ros NV $20. Google them with the letters 'nz' and a local stockist should pop up.
