Our Man in the Provinces Can’t Believe It: Champagne Is Out?!
He ate out several times a week, always searching for the tastiest herring, most fun wine, juiciest hamburger or best meat thermometer. But then journalist Marcel Langedijk traded Amsterdam for the provinces. Is it possible to endure life there as a lover of the finer things in food and drink? As long as people keep sending booze, it is.
I managed to keep my departure for the provinces hidden from The People for a long time. Not because I was ashamed, of course. Well, actually, because I was ashamed, since things happen in the Randstad, which automatically means they probably don’t happen in the provinces. By now, though, I find that very fact—that nothing happens—extremely relaxing, and one of the advantages of the provinces. And if I want something to happen, I get in the car and drive to somewhere where things happen. I should have thought of that years earlier, because it’s not only relaxing, it also saves an enormous amount of money. The Randstad is finally catching on too, unfortunately, partly thanks to Natasha Froger, who shows Randstad residents on Voor Hetzelfde Geld what they can get elsewhere in the country compared with their cramped little homes in the big city. I’m telling you: it won’t be long before places like Wanneperveen and Ruinerwold have their own yoga centers.
A pair of white sports socks
But I digress. What I mean to say is that I’m no longer ashamed of my transfer to the outback. I even dare to give my address to interested parties without further ado, such as PR agencies. Since I started writing for this authoritative website, they’ve been constantly asking for my details so they can send me ‘fun things’ or otherwise bother me. It’s not always easy. A few examples of the ‘fun things’ I received in recent weeks are: a chocolate bar, a USB stick with information about a whisky brand, a pair of white sports socks and an hideously ugly T-shirt in a size that revealed the sender had sized me up as someone with obese tendencies.
No more fake champagne
There are also people in public relations who do understand. They send me booze—which I do not mean—I repeat, DO NOT MEAN—the three bottles of fake champagne from last week. Speaking of champagne: apparently, it’s incredibly out of fashion. If you believe the PR people, that is. I almost never do, but when I received the third bottle of specialty beer today that was intended to make me forget champagne, right in the middle of champagne season, I started to have my doubts.
Champagne beer?!
First there was the Limited Edition Botanical Brut, made with ‘noble Riesling yeast inspired by champagne’ and even featuring a proper pop-top cork. A day later it was followed by ‘barrel-aged’ beer from the Gulpener brewery. It’s called Gulle Tinus and comes in a batch of 7,500 (super scarce, the PR guy boasted), and is a ‘complex’ character, matured in oak barrels. Finally, Grolsch’s PR representative dropped off a bottle of Finale. ‘A beer for champagne moments’, because, as Grolsch says, among the Dutch who drink alcohol on New Year’s Eve, that drink doesn’t have to be champagne (61%). More strikingly, 46% do it only ‘because that’s how it’s done’, and 34% of those drinkers would ‘much rather’ drink beer. The fact that Grolsch commissioned the research itself smells a little like ‘we at WC Duck recommend WC Duck’, but that doesn’t stop me from starting my own investigation.
If any more champagne-forgetting beers have been made, send them my way, dear PR man or woman. I’ll sacrifice my normally champagne-oriented New Year’s Eve to taste those brews and report back at the beginning of 2020, hangover and all, with my findings.
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