THE BOLLLINGER INDEX (1 BLG = GBP 30.00)

Whatever money I earn I either spend on Champagne or travelling and often both. I cannot say that drinking Champagne and travelling is particularly exciting as my ideal flight drink is a good old G&T but I shan't deny that I have done it the noble way too. The fact is that in retrospect a flight to Sydney from London is about 25 hours long and being infused on Champagne is actually a little worse on landing then being infused on Gin. On the minus side, the good stuff is only served in the premium cabins and often it is not what I would like to drink anyway but gin is on tap in any cabin. So for me a Sydney trip is never too long as it is not 25 hours but 15 G&Ts that I have to deal with; more importantly, you don't want to be drinking Champagne you don't like just for the sake of it.

The point is that having visited a few places I could tell that the prices of Champagne wines do vary from place to place. Somehow I always settled on looking at Bollinger but, believe it or not, this is not available everywhere. Nevertheless, everytime I relocate the first shop I go to is a wine shop and I check the prices of Champagne wines. Of course I convert ever single one of them most of the prices are not that difficult to remember.

Classic example has become Bollinger Special Cuvee where the variable is pretty high. For instance a bottle of it costs in London is anywhere between GBP25.00 - GBP 44.00 mostly I buy it for GBP 30.00. In Sydney the same will go for AUD 100.00 which with the current rate of exchange amounts to GBP 76.92. In Dublin a bottle is at EUR 55.00 so with the horrendous rate of exchange again this translates into GBP 50.00. In Paris the prices are little bit more humane reflecting the higher end of Londons' shops. But the biggest surprise is where you would expect it the least: Scandinavia!

The Bollinger Index (1BLG = GBP 30.00) establishes how expensive certain places are to live in and subsequently whether or not I could/would live there. So Sydney and Dublin I am, for the given reasons, ruling out but Scandinavia here I come!

The other aspect of The Bollinger Index is related to prices but not necessarily of Champagne wines but more generally. Good example is rent. London or anywhere. For a studio in London you would cough up about GBP 250.00 which translates into BLG 8.33 meaning that you could get 8 bottles and 2 glasses of Bollinger for it. As another comparison is lets say a pair of cuban heeled boots from YSL priced at GBP 620.00. For that amount of cash you ll get 31 bottles of Bollinger Special Cuvee so The Bollinger Index would read BLG 31.

Just to be even  more peculiar I divided 1 BLG into 6 units as there are 6 glasses in each bottle and named it RDL as in 6 Riedels.