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Dublin: 10 °C Monday 23 December, 2024

Does putting a spoon in a bottle of Prosecco actually keep it fizzy overnight?

A real problem investigated.

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YOU MIGHT HAVE heard of the old trick on how to keep champagne or Prosecco fizzy overnight - that is, to stick a spoon in the bottle’s mouth, as above.

But, as with many old wives’ tales, scientists have looked into it and proven that putting a spoon in there makes no difference at all to the bubbles. None whatsoever.

How disappointing.

A Standford University study into the champagne/silver spoon myth was conducted – and categorically found that the spoon makes not a jot of difference overnight to champagne bubbliness.

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It turns out though that putting the cork back in the bottle is the single worst thing you can do, as the study outlined:

The spoons, silver or stainless, were not especially successful in maintaining the sparkle of the wine. But spoons and all other treatments worked better than re-corking the bottles. At least in this test, re- corking seemed to be the best way to make champagne lose effervescence and taste.

The Kitchn blog also did its own in-house testing on the theory – and found the same results. Their round table of tasters actually found that no spoon at all was the best – after ranking these varieties after one night:

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The Wine Folly blog has also investigated and discovered that, as with all the others, this one is just a myth. The popular Discovery series Mythbusters in the US checked into it as well and declared it to be a myth.

The researchers at Stanford did give some advice on what is the best thing to do with a half-empty bottle:

Keep it cold. In fact, never let it warm up. That’s the secret.

So now.

More Why do fizzy drinks taste so much better out of a can?>

More Red, white, or rosé? Here’s the wine that’ll give you the worst hangover>

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