By DCist contributor Amy Monroe

Today’s column will be about Champagne and sparkling wine. It will resemble Ben Giliberti’s wine column in yesterday’s Washington Post in that “It’s All About the Bubbles.” It will not resemble that column in any other way.

If you’re looking for a laundry list of recommendations offset by non-specific tasting notes containing uselessly vague words such as “fresh” and “lively,” stop reading now and take a look at the Post’s laundry list of what Giliberti likes (with helpful approximate prices and instructions to call your local retailer to verify availability, of course). Don’t get us wrong, we enjoyed Giliberti’s characterization of both the Louis Roderer Brut Premier and the Gloria Ferrer Blanc de Noirs Brut Sonoma County as “husky” — which conjured up amusing images of overweight 8-year-old boys reluctantly shopping for school clothes at JC Penney. We were also relieved by Giliberti’s reassurance that Tattinger Brut La Francaise is as “subtle and elegant as ever.”

None of Giliberti’s overused and ultimately meaningless descriptors will tell you what you really want to know: will I like this wine? What it really comes down to, of course, is that you will pop the cork and sip the sparkly stuff on New Year’s Eve without the benefit of Giliberti as your tasting guide. We at DCist aim to assist every bubble imbiber in buying a bottle that will bring him or her personal happiness this year, and, although we know this task is almost certain to incur the wrath of wine experts (real and imagined), we promise to remain fresh and lively in the face of all criticism (subtle, elegant, or otherwise). And we even might emerge a little huskier for it.

What follows is our earnest and honest advice to those looking to score a superlative sip at the stroke of midnight.