Cristal Bling

I recently visited the Chinawhite nightclub in London with a few friends. We were sat down at a table towards the back of the club drinking China White’s signature Lychee Martinis, when I noticed something rather sinister occurring at the table opposite.

A group of three men were all swigging directly from bottles of Cristal Champagne (how civil) and waving sparklers in the air (when you spend a few hundred pounds per bottle in a club, I guess the least you can expect is a sparkler). I know there is nothing strange about this for a London club, but then I noticed the bottles of house champagne underneath their table.

These three imbeciles were topping up their bottles of Cristal underneath their table with house champagne, thereby cutting their bill down by a few thousand. They would then walk around the club, swigging their house champagne, attempting to chat up anything that moved.

This was just about one of the funniest scenes I had every seen – Would you like Proseco with your Cristal my lady? It’s amazing what you can discover in nightclubs if you look beneath the surface now and again. I think it’s fair to say that P Diddy and 50 Cent have a lot to answer for!

Louis Roederer Cristal has garnered quite a reputation thanks to the American music scene. It seems some people don’t know why they are drinking it (or pretending to) in the first place; they forget there is actually some substance to this label.

My advice is to stay in one night and purchase a bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal 1997 for a tenth of what you would pay in a club and really savour it. This Champagne is quite simply breathtaking and worth every penny (even at London club prices), you can always find a reason to celebrate.