Let me start by saying I favor proper drinks, generally. Whiskey, bourbon, that sort of thing. Wine, though less so. For some reason, I was never able to get into cocktails - frilly, unhealthy nonsense. I see no reason to dilute good alcohol with some fruity syrup. And I'm much riled by the young women I see around me who seem to exist on those exclusively, considering anything else "too strong for me".
I don't buy it. I think it's a projection that women should be cute and dainty and only drink cute, fruity pink drinks. Fuck that. I can appreciate a woman who drinks beer, as it's regarded as a typically male drink also, so they have my respect, though beer and I, after youthful shenanigans, no longer mix except on select occasions. But I can respect it. A proper drink with a proper history.
An exception to my frilly pink rule is champagne. White, none of that pink shit for me, but it's definitely frilly and can be fruity (though not if I have a choice).
I like champagne for its rarity. My mom can't stand it, so we seldom have it around the house. In more recent years, I've insisted on champagne for special days like birthdays and holidays. If it were up to 
Reading Colm Toibin's book on Barcelona, I was impressed when he mentioned that cava, the Catalan version of champagne, is part of the local life. To be had at meals on a daily basis, Toibin says. Well, naturally I was intrigued, so decided to track down a cava and wine store where I haltingly explained in my budding Spanish what I was looking for. I felt I had no business standing before a connoisseur or in a specialty store at all. I figured it was way out of budget, but after I admitted to the lovely man at the counter that I was not looking for anything frilly and expensive, he produced just the thing.
This, he assured me, was just like the fancier bottles he'd noticed me looking at (50+ Euros?! Jesus. That's two bottles of good whiskey.), but differed in presentation and was much more reasonably priced.
Feeling quite pleased both with my budget-friendly endeavor and my Spanish, I went home with the cava and almost took out the lightbulb. Delicious, as promised, and I've made it a rule to have a little cava each day for the remainder of my trip.
Why not? Why shouldn't you have champagne every day?
But what are we celebrating?
That's always the question that comes to mind. There's the feeling that we need a special occasion to drink champagne, something to celebrate. At the risk of sounding corny (guilty as charged during this sojourn), why not life?
For me, for now, I recognize there's something pretty damn extraordinary about being alive, about being able to be here, and yeah, why not be ridiculously grateful to the Universe for allowing it? It's not a given.
And the truth is, there's things to celebrate around every corner. Swimming in the sea. Feeling the sun on my face. An old man smiling at me with complicity, like we were the only two people in the world. Washing on the line. Men with warm voices who read poetry. Being seen by someone for the way your soul is, and not how you'd perhaps present it to the world.
Truth is, if you're not finding reasons to celebrate every day, then maybe a better question would be why are you so damn picky?
I don't know if Toibin was telling the truth, or if it was a statement that only applied to a segment of his Barcelona. Maybe not all Catalonians drink cava every day. But there's something about that attitude, that being here now is a good enough reason to celebrate that appeals to me greatly. Besides, life can be pretty fucking grim without us helping it along...
Have some fucking champagne. Remember your being alive is pretty fucking marvelous.
(People like to twist it around. They say "not my life, I've got plenty of problems". Sure. Things hurt. Sometimes, shit's unfair. But a lot of it is just us conflating it, you know? Besides, what's this? You're making demands now? Setting conditions? Oh my life would be something worth celebrating if I didn't have X to worry about or an argument with Y? Who do you think you are?)