Hi, I'm Andrew from OYA Restaurant and Lounge in Washington, D.C. and today we’re discussing tips from a sommelier.
In this clip, I'm going to show you how to safely open a bottle of sparkling wine. So a few things that you may need to get started, a corkscrew with knife, just in case your bottle of sparkling wine doesn’t have a full tab as this one does because you want to go ahead and make a slice in order to remove the top portion of the metal capsule. You also want to have around a napkin or a towel, that way when you are getting ready to remove the cork, you’ll have a little bit more of grip and just in case, it foams up on you it will be there to sap up any wine that flies out. So, let’s get started.
First, always make sure that the wine is fully chilled and we’re talking about 37 degrees. If it’s not quite cold enough, the cork may fly out and the wine will foam up all over you and any guests that might be around. Also, when opening bottles of sparkling wine, remember to keep it away from yourself and other people that might be in the room because you definitely don’t want to hit somebody with a flying cork. It’s about eight atmospheres where the pressure inside most probably as a sparkling wine and that really can hurt someone. Also, if you happen to have any glass, plates in your kitchen or anything breakable at any walls, you probably don’t want it be placing the bottle towards those walls because it could break something.
So let’s do it. Go ahead and remove the foil from the top of the bottle. This one was easy. Again, if it didn’t have the pull tab, you would have gotten your corkscrew out and you would have made a slice around the bottom of the metal cage here and then you would have just had to pick it back but most everyday sparkling wines these days seem to be coming with the pull tabs. Some of your higher end champagnes, not so much. Here’s the tricky part because you want to make sure at all times that you have one thumb over the cork just in case it decides to fly out unexpectedly.
So I'm going to use my left hand since I’m a right handed kind of guy. So first, we have to get off the metal cage. As you can see, it has a little hook here that you need to undo. So we’re going to go ahead and undo it. Now, you want to also at this point, then go around without taking your thumb off and unloosen this cage. It’s almost all they way off and here’s the tricky part. You just want to slide off the metal cage and then put your other thumb on there just in case again, it wants to fly out.
So I'm going to switch back to my left hand and get my napkin out. Place the napkin over the cork and push it down. Now, do not hold the cork because if you pull the cork it might break and the last thing you want is a broken cork. So we’re going to actually twist the bottom of the bottle very slowly, while pushing down on the napkin and the cork and it’s coming out. There we go, voila! You also want to be careful not to let it come out too quickly because the bigger the pop, the more carbon dioxide that’s being released and that means there will be less bubbles in your wine, it’s the bubbles that make it bubbly.
So after you got it off, you’re ready to serve. There we go, beautiful and as I mentioned before it’s a good idea to have a bucket around just in case you need to keep the wine chilled while you’re enjoying it. So there you have it, how to open a bottle of sparkling wine safely. Stay tuned for my next clip, where I’ll show you how to decant a bottle of red wine.
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