The party's over

The new year is in, the debris of the old remains. The humble cava cork has disappeared down the back of the sideboard but the cap remains.

One of the more curious hobbies that people in Catalonia have is the collection of these small metal caps from the top of the cava bottle. They are quite distinctive and decorative and a whole hobby industry has grown up involving special albums with transparent pockets to display the caps and mini crushers to fold them flat.

A useless fact for you all: genuine cava always has a four pointed star printed on the bottom of the cork, check out your next bottle of Tesco cava!