Tips for Tipping Champagne

Filed in archive Sparkling Wine on June 3, 2006

I'm off to my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary party today. It's a surprise! Shhh...don't tell them!

One of the festivities planned by my sister who is organizing the party is an anniversary champagne toast.

I don't plan to drink any more champagne there other than the one glass since it's a good distance away, but when I get home, I thought it might be nice to have a few bottles chilling in the frig.

The only issue is that champagne usually gives me the dickens of a hang over, so I have to be careful. Luckily, I found some good advice about this from Manolo's Food Blog:

A Mr. Henry Dictum: Never drink champagne with sweets.

This may seem counter-intuitive but it is a dietary dictum Mr. Henry has tested empirically in the field, so to speak. The subsequent hangover, and there will always be a champagne hangover, is made far worse by the addition of extra sugars to an already super-sugared evening. If you run short of champagne, and Mr. Henry shudders to imagine such a situation, then a sweet course will bring champagne sugars bubbling back into the bloodstream for a half hour or so, after which you are on your own, beset with cotton-mouth, headache, and nausea.