How to Pour Champagne the Right Way on Valentine’s Day and Every Day

January 29, 2016 – We have to applaud House Beautiful for an excellent article on how to pour Champagne correctly.  The headline says, “We’ve All Been Pouring Champagne Wrong This Whole Time”.  Well, no, not all of us have.  Many of us know to tilt the glass, much as one does with beer.  That way you end up with a glass of wine with bubbles racing to the top to create a lovely head or “mousse”, not just a glass of mousse pouring over the edge.  But what we didn’t know is there’s a whole lot more to why pouring correctly enhances taste, aroma and, of course, the bubbles.

A study conducted by French chemists at the Université de Reims discovered that pouring Champagne, or sparkling wine, straight down into a flute develops a large head, as noted above, which collapses taking the all-important fizz and flavor with it.  The slanted pour preserves the bubbles or level of carbon dioxide. The other important result of the research was that Champagne must be chilled in order to maintain high carbon dioxide levels.  Recommended chill is 39 degrees F.

The experiment was reported by the American Chemical Society and you can read all about it, or if science isn’t your strong suit, just look at the illustrations which is a heck of a lot easier and quite fascinatinghttp://web.1.c2.audiovideoweb.com/1c2web3536/champagnepouring.pdf