How To Open Sparkling Wine Safely (And The Sommelier Exam That Nearly Broke Me)

Welcome to Taste With Elle. Today, I'm going to teach you a very important life skill, which is how to safely and competently open a bottle of sparkling wine. This is very important. Bottles of sparkling wine are typically bottled around 5 or 6 atmospheres of pressure. Those corks, if you're not careful, can come flying out at like 10, 15, 20 mph. I don't know, I'll backtrack to them and put it on the screen there. This is how fast corks can come out. In fact, over the world, people are still getting a grip on how to make sparkling wine. People would wear masks in the cellar to avoid getting killed by flying corks. All this to say, you need to open a bottle of wine safely. I'm going to teach you how to do that, and then we are going to have a drink. First things first, we get this foil off. If we were doing this for a test, we would also be getting all sorts of light sounds or something fancy, but we're not going to do that. Next is this little metal thing called the muslet. You're going to put your thumb on top of it, and you're going to twist it 6 times. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. We're not going to take the fingers off. We're going to hold it firmly, and we are going to twist it slowly but surely. The goal is a nun's heart. Just make sure it's not pointed towards anyone. Oh yeah, that's point number two. Don't point this at anybody. Point it away slowly. We're going to turn this to the bottom rest. I hope that was louder than I would have wanted it to be for a test, but you get the point. This cork did not fly into my hat. And I have a nice, delightful bottle of sparkling wine, which I am going to drink in a white wine glass, because flukes are nonsense, and flukes, while they give major vibes, are not the best way to say fuddle. I am not drinking champagne today. I am drinking the world's next champagne, due to the wind, which is, say, sparkling. They are making sparkling wine very well in England, where it used to be too cold to grow quality wine grapes, but they have chocolates in Cape Verden, and they have warmer atmospheres, so they can ripen the grapes. So we're getting too close to the Burgundian climates. This is chapel-down, non-vintage rosé. Give it a whirl, and then we're going to do story time. Now, this should be safe for me. I can confidently open a bottle of wine. Ooh. Yum. I mean, it's very dry. Ooh. But also, wow. They're like, you know when you are undercurrent of, like, brush, and, like, this tastes like a herbal, and then you, like, just wipe it, you know, with a toast. Yum. I will also show you, if you do not want your bubbles to go flat, you can get one of these little suckers, which you pop on, and it seals around the bottom, and it makes a nice, firm seal, and also this little hingy thing that goes under the rim, and I'm not going to show it to you today. And we'll also do a story time. I first really had to learn how to competently and speedily and elegantly open a bottle of sparkling wine for my certified sommelier test for the master sommelier. The last portion of the test is the most, sort of, for me, the most intimidating part, because you have to do a blank taste, and then you have to do a theory, and then, last, you serve. That's when you have to go, and pretend like you're in a restaurant, because we will be serving a master sommelier, and they're going to ask you to do all sorts of things, and you don't actually know what they're going to ask you, except they always ask you to open a bottle of sparkling wine. The whole time you're doing it, they're just, like, asking you all these questions, and you're supposed to then, like, you're supposed to know the answers to them, or if you don't, don't make it up. Tell them, sir, I don't know that offhand, but I'd be happy to look it up for you when I return to the kitchen. Once in a while, I get a tough bottle, and I'm still really bad at opening sparkling wine, and, like, that opening I just did, that was too loud. So, I was one of the last people to go in for my service portion of this exam, and they told me I had to interview Tim Gainsor, a master sommelier, who is a wonderful writer, and I had actually spent a lot of time studying his tips on wine tasting to prepare for the test, so I was like, Hi, um, I am the wine Jedi serving Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I walked out, but, like, first he asked me to, like, serve the might of Consul Rick, like, Calverton, and the Chablis Premier Cru, and the Saint-Denis, which, like, is one of those things where, like, oh, she knows the sub-region, she knows the fontanet, and she knows the wine. Don't serve them the white wine for the fontanet. So, anyway, and then, of course, he orders a bottle of wine, and I'm just like, what are these, like, cute cabos for your opening? And, meanwhile, he's asking me all these questions. He's like, what about this pairing? What about that pairing? Could you tell me what a white lady is? I said, hmm, I'm a white lady. I'm just kidding. I said, cocktail. And, meanwhile, I am just, like, struggling with this wine. It will not open. He was, like, running out of questions. And, finally, I serve it to him, and then he's like, hey, clear all these drinks, carry the tray across the room with that. And I did it without spilling, and then he's like, so, what's your point of view? Are you in a restaurant? Do you want to be a sommelier? And, by the way, my mind would say, hell, lie. Lie to him. Tell him you've never went to a restaurant before in your life, and be a restaurant sommelier. You're an entertainer. Don't you have to be entertaining too, to be a restaurant sommelier? All the best props for a restaurant sommelier. Just go, like, to the right. So, anyway, I've been going, hey, you know, I'm a journalist, and I have a podcast, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, well, okay, yeah, I can tell you don't work in a restaurant, but do carry a tray across the room with it. And I did. I did write tables, but I'm vegan. And then I walked out. Despite the fact that I had not dropped anything, I had successfully done all the maneuvers, and people didn't have the answers to pretty much all of the questions, I was like, I don't know how to do this. So, then, eventually, they called us all back, and they're calling names, and they're calling names. I mean, I might be 11 years old. Tim gave us our tip-ups afterwards. They hand out champagne and stuff, and, like, all of a sudden, all of us are sad, and all of a sudden, Tim comes up to us, and I was like, ah, you passed? I didn't, I didn't. I was like, you passed? And he was like, no, you didn't. I was like, okay. So, after midnight, he said, do you need to know how to open a sparkling wine so that there's only a few shots left? You don't need any of that, but you do need to open it safely, and you can now open your bottle. So, go safely and confidently open yourself a bottle of sparkling wine. It could be a champagne, it could be a wish, it could be a macaroon, it could be a French Corta, it could be a Tuna Dock. We could go into, I'm not necessarily a traditional Latin, it could be a La Frusco, or a Prosecco, or it could be a Cactus Deac, which is what they call sparkling wine in Spanish. It could be a Cact, which they call it in German, it could be a Pompadour. Safely and confidently, as far as you are, open yourself a bottle of sparkling wine, pour yourself a glass, and enjoy.