Good Questions: Tips on Preserving Your Champagne?

Every so often, , we editors get together and make like it's 1999 with a box of champagne that we just happened to pick up at Costco. OK, so it hasn't happened yet (and probably never will, considering how far each of us lives from the other), but it doesn't hurt to imagine. In our optimistic minds, we would have finished off the entire case, and wake up the next morning refreshed and ready for a six-mile jog in Malibu. However, what's more likely to happen is that we'll end up finishing two and a third bottles, wake up the next morning at 2 pm with a hangover so bad that we puke all over our Bertoia diamond wool-covered chairs. But who cares? We have two-thirds of champagne leftover and that is NOT heading down the drain!

Now, we've heard of that old wives' tale of sticking a silver spoon in the bottle (apparently, it doesn't work. In fact, it'll make your champagne go flatter faster), and we've tried this Concerto Wine Saver from Williams-Sonoma, but it still tastes a bit flat the next day. Anyone have any other tips or tricks to save our dwindling champagne stash?

Comments (6)

I have used various wine stoppers in the past and they preserve the wine by sucking the oxygen out of the bottle. The rule of thumb is that you want to vacuum-seal wine (suck the air out) and pressure-seal champagne (pump air back in to increase the pressure thus preserving the bubbles).

Here's a cool wine/champagne preservation set at Brookstone that does both: http://tinyurl.com/36h3v5

no hand operated or tiny electric pump is going to come anywhere near creating enough of a vacuum to be effective, and you certainly don't want to pump AIR into any wine. while nothing can really put the genie back into the bottle, look for nitrogen/carbon dioxide or argon injection solutions to keep wine the freshest.

There's only one solution to that problem: mimosas.

funny, i find the spoon trick works for me. i now use an old mary poppins commerative spoon with a large bowl but i've used all sorts of metal spoons with similar, good results. i've kept prosecco and champagne bubbly for almost a week (might've stayed longer but i finished the bottles by then).

I second the spoon trick, it works like a charm.

I have a sure way of preserving champagne. I modified a stopper so that inert gas such as nitrogen or argon can be injected into the bottle after a glass or two has been poured.The bottle is repressurize with 55 psi of gas and
this restores the bottle back to near its original state. You
can pour as little or as much as you want and the champagne will retain its effervescence. I have kept a opened bottle af champagne in my refrigerator for a month and the last pour is as good as the first pour of a new bottle.