Keep the Fizz in your Champagne — If You Don’t Drink it All

New Year’s Eve is right around the corner, and the one thing most people do at midnight is toast to the New Year with Champagne, or a sparkling wine.  Champagne always marks special occasions and celebrations, and if you’re lucky on New Year’s Eve maybe you’ll also get a midnight kiss.

“Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!”

Dom Perignon, when tasting the first sparkling Champagne

But what to do if you didn’t drink the entire bottle and have some leftover sparkler in the bottle?  I know, I know, that really is a silly question.  But just in case, I’m sharing a secret with you.

Well, maybe it’s not a secret to you.  But when my friend Louanne showed me this trick, I was gobsmacked that I had never heard of it.  You see, Louanne LOVES Champagne — so I wasn’t surprised that she had a little secret, but I was surprised at how simple it is. And all it takes is a spoon.  Or a fork.  Your choice of utensils is entirely up to you.

All you have to do is insert the handle of the spoon into the neck of the bottle (the spoon keeps it from falling into the bottle) and place the bottle in the fridge.  The Champagne or sparkling wine will keep its sparkle and effervescence for days.  I was so skeptical when I first learned about this trick, but it does indeed work.  Here’s the article that Louanne sent me that explains the science behind it.  I, of course, had to figure out the “How does that work??” and couldn’t just accept a spoon in the bottle.  And I have to admit, it’s kind of like how airplanes get off the ground and stay up in the sky—it’s sort of magic.  Apparently, the metal from the spoon helps to cool the air inside the bottle, which makes the air more dense. The denser air acts like a blanket on the surface of the wine and prevents the bubbles from escaping.  How about that.  Now don’t get your hopes up that it will be just like the day you opened the bottle, but it will be pretty darn close.

Another trick to opening a bottle of Champagne or sparkling wine is to hold onto the cork and twist the bottle away from it.  This prevents both the cork flying out of the bottle and doing a lot of damage as well as keeping all that lovely sparkling fun inside the bottle, instead of geysering out and wasting it.  Just place a towel over the cork as you twist the bottle and it won’t make a run for it.

So if you find yourself with some leftover sparkler when the New Year’s Eve celebrations have ended, try this little trick.  Now you can hold onto your stars for a little longer, that is of course if you can actually wait that long to finish the bottle.