How to Get the Most out of Your Bottle of Champagne

Given the exorbitant prices charged for a good bottle of champagne these days, it seems a shame not to make the most of your purchase (otherwise you might as well splash out on a bottle of babycham* and have done with it). Follow these three tips for the ultimate in drinking pleasure:

1. Assuming that you've kept the champagne in the fridge in the normal way, transfer it to the freezer about half an hour before serving.
2. Similarly, put your champagne glasses in the freezer as well for about 30 minutes.
3. This is the most important point. Make sure to pour the champagne into a tilted glass, just as you do when pouring beer into a glass. That’s because the bubbles — or dissolved carbon dioxide — in Champagne release its aroma and cause a tingly feeling that heightens the drinking experience. The higher the concentration of bubbles, the better.
   The best way to keep the bubbles in the beverage, as any beer drinker knows, is to let the liquid tumble gently down the side of a tilted glass.
   When Champagne is poured into a glass held vertically, it loses twice the amount of bubbles, said Gerard Liger-Belair, the study’s lead author and a physicist at the University of Reims, in the heart of France’s Champagne region.
   * The genuine champagne perry