Christmas champagne

Fizz with attitude
If you are a lover of much richer, full-bodied bubbly, indulge in a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label (around £25.00), Louis Roederer Non-Vintage (around £25.00), or Bollinger (about £28.00). All these wines taste excellent with food and you can easily serve them through Christmas lunch. If you fancy having a special Christmas Eve meal with lobster or oysters, again these hefty sparklers will hit the spot.

If money is no object, you can’t go wrong with Krug Grande Cuvée, deliciously rich and nutty. And so it should be at around £75.00 a bottle.

Vintage champagne
If you want to push the boat out and indulge in a vintage, look around and see if you can find any wines from the stunning 1990 vintage. Waitrose’s 1990 is fabulous value at £18.99 a bottle. For other well-known houses, such as Louis Roederer or Bollinger, expect to pay around £45.00.

Seriously big bottles
If you are planning a big party, and like really big impressive bottles, Waitrose currently have limited stocks of Jeroboams (3 litres, equivalent to 4 bottles) of Louis Roederer Non Vintage (£150.00) and Charles Heidsieck Brut 1982 at £300.00. Be warned, you need to be quite strong to pour from these majestic bottles.

Demi-sec champagne
These champagnes, to which an extra dose of sugar has been added, are currently enjoying something of a revival. They are nothing like as sweet as the grapey Italian fizz, Asti; more in between that and a standard Brut champagne. Not only do they taste good with pudding (especially sherry trifle), they are also delicious with lots of quite rich or creamy starters such as scallops or salmon with hollandaise. Try Nicolas Feuillatte Demi-Sec (£17.99 Asda), Piper Heidsieck (£18.99 Tesco) or supermarket own-label examples at around £13.00.