Opening a Bottle of Champagne

Video Transcript

"Here I am again Chuck Byers for Expert Village. And today we're going to learn how to open a bottle of sparkling wine or champagne. Now champagne is a bottle of wine that has a great deal of pressure attached to it as our other sparkling wines. And one has to be very careful in opening the bottle. For example, and you don't want to break the glass. This bottle is under a great deal of pressure. So the first thing you want to do with the bottle is undo the cork or cap, and as you can see there's a wire holding the cork down. That's so the pressure doesn't push the cork right out on it's own. Now you've got to be very careful when or where you point this because even though the cork is wired down it could take off at any second, especially when you relieve the pressure. So you slowly relieve the pressure or the cork wire, and you make sure it's not pointed at anyone or anything that could be damaged. Because this cork comes out with a great deal of force. Now when opening the bottle or taking the cork out, it's wise to hold the cork with the thumb on top of the cork and the hand around the bottle neck. Better still Marco will give me a cloth. And this cloth I usually put around the top, just in case to make sure that there's no problem. And slowly turn the bottle counter clockwise. Now a lot of people like to hear a big pop. But really that's not that great, you want to slowly take the cork out. And the less noise you make the better unless of course you hear that lovely fizz of escaping gas and guess what when that happens you don't lose any of that luscious liquid inside and the wine is ready to drink."