The best summer sparklers David Williams
Taittinger Nocturne Sec, Champagne, France NV (from £38.10,
) After a year without its distinctive cocktail of buttoned-up suburban stuffiness and elite international sporting glamour, Wimbledon is back at last tomorrow. And (at time of writing) with up to 15,000 spectators allowed into the grounds in SW19 each day, the event’s return will be a relief to British soft-fruit producers as well as tennis fans. In a normal year, the Wimbledon crowd gets through about 200,000 portions of strawberries across the tournament’s fortnight. There are strawberries, too, in the many thousands of glasses of Pimm’s (276,291 of them in 2019, according to the Wimbledon website), although the drink that most of us associate with the fruit at Wimbledon is champagne. The official brand, since 2001, is Lanson. But I’d save a glass of that house’s very good, very bright, racy and pristine, but also really quite dry Black Label Brut NV