I would not have believed it unless I had tried it. Last month I rented a home in Carmel and opened
bottles of bubbly one evening for a party.
While the house was very well equipped for wine-related entertaining (lovely
stemware, foil cutter & well-made openers), it did not have a stopper for
sparkling wine. At the end of the night
one of my in-the-know guests heard me lamenting that the bubbles would be gone
the next day and offered the following: “Stick
a spoon in it.” I thought I had
mis-heard, but she proceeded to drop a spoon (handle down through the bottle’s
neck) and placed it in the frig.
The next day I was sure the spoon trick had failed. After all, I’m in the wine business and
surely I would have heard of such a low-tech solution years ago if it actually worked. The bubbles were still there 18 hours later. How
could this be? Two days later I was
explaining the phenomena to another overnight guest. (I think she thought the bubbles had gone to
my head). So, I replicated the spoon experiment,
this time with a French bubbly. Next day,
the effervescence was still there. Now,
I’m a true believer, as are the several friends who sampled the spooned wine
the following day.
How could this possibly be? In searching the Internet, there’s a host of
information about the spoon trick in preserving bubbles, including interesting
evidence from researchers at Stanford University. The Stanford scientists found that capping a
bottle of sparkling wine actually
decreases the number of bubbles and found the spoon to actually be more
effective than a special Champagne closure.
There is also supposition that the key is refrigeration, not the
spoon. Some experiments indicate that
refrigerating the bottle with or without a spoon is equally effective.
While you may not be willing to gamble with your finest
vintage Champagne, try it, you’ll like it!
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