Tab Tries: Champagne Soc Ball

After the rush of summatives had ended it seemed that the end of last term was rarely spent out of black tie. With local dry-cleaners working overtime, the Michaelmas ball season culminated in one event that eclipsed most of the others; the Champagne Society Winter Ball.

240 members of the 1,300 strong Champagne Society (at least according to their Facebook group) piled onto coaches to take them to take them to Beamish Hall, a country house hotel just outside of Durham.

The vibe was excited, everybody dressed in impeccable dinner suits and elegant dresses seemed not able to wait to get the evening under way. Someone sitting across from me turned to his neighbour and said emphatically, ‘I want this to be the only coach journey I remember this evening’. Fair enough.

I had graced Beamish with my presence two evenings earlier for the Law Ball but the thing that stuck me was the change in elegance. Whether it was a result of the dearer ticket price or just a better eye by the decs committee the whole place looked grander and it gave the evening a touch more class.

This was a theme that continued throughout the evening. The sight that greeted me as I entered the champagne reception was one of Mikey Dicks, society president, topping up glasses with a Balthazar (12 litres for the uninitiated) of champagne, a bottle that came up to at least his waist.

As the everyone got gently tipsier we all took our seats in the dining room. The food was exemplary, almost restaurant quality which isn’t an easy feat when you are serving to over 200 people at once, and was accompanied by the delightful background noise of DU Jazz Society.

Accompanying the meal was, understandably, champagne. This continued the evening’s theme of doing nothing in half measures, the bottles seemed endless and there always appeared to be a member of the serving staff ready to replace your empty bottle of Laurent Perrier with a freshly popped new one the moment you had quaffed the last drop.

Some barely made it past the starter.

I haven’t got drunk solely on champagne since about New Years Eve 2003 and it’s a truly bizarre experience, there isn’t a drink that affects you in quite the same way. An average of two bottles per person left everyone in a very merry mood for the centrepiece of the evening, the raffle.

Gone was your standard ‘dinner for two’ main prize, and in its stead stood a Methuselah (6 litres) of high quality champagne, a meal for four with accompanying alcohol and an abundance of further bottles of champagne to take home. Additional tickets had been purchased throughout the evening in their hundreds and, predictably, despite buying 10 I won nothing.

The lucky winner

When asked, the exec told us that the aim of the evening was “to offer champagne to the masses by keeping ticket prices as low as possible” and that they did. Most who went spent the next three days recovering in bed.

Down before pâté

All in all the evening was a tremendous success, Teddy James’ DJ set closing out one of the loosest evening’s Durham has seen in a while. It was organised to the last detail by the four exec members and I know no one that did not enjoy themselves to excess. A special mention should go to Mikey Dicks for masterminding the event.

Champagne Soc have a canapé event toward the end of this term and they hope a summer ball is in the works. All that remains to be seen is whether anything can top their Winter Ball. It remains the one to beat.

Photo credit: Alasdair Harriss