How to: Open a Bottle of Champagne

Now the holidays are fast approaching the bubbly will start flying. Okay hopefully not really because if you open a bottle of champagne properly it won’t go flying across the room. Opening a bottle of champagne can be a little tricky if you’re not sure how to go about it. Champagne has a long fermenting process and during this process it creates a lot of pressure and gas inside. You might notice that champagne bottles are made of much thicker glass than wine bottles and that is to make sure they can withstand the pressure. That is why when opening a bottle of champagne you should follow the recommend steps to help slowly easy the pressure while opening and not have your cork and half your bottle of bubbly end up on the walls.

• Make sure the Champagne is chilled
• Hold bottle of Champagne at 45° angle faced away from you at all times
• Remove foil wrapper
• Gently untwist wire cage and loosen but do not remove
• Cover wire cage and cork with towel
• Firmly place one hand on top of cork and the other on the bottom of champagne bottle
• Twist bottle, not cork slowly
• Keep slowly twisting bottle until you feel cork starting to release (usually about 3 twists)
• Apply a little pressure onto cork as cork starts to release
• You will hear a gentle pop and know your bottle of champagne is now open
• The quieter you open the bottle the better
• Slowly pour Champagne into flutes and enjoy

Tags: Champagne, Holidays, hosting, how to

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Champagne, Holiday ideas, Holidays, drink ideas, hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.