CHILLING

Chilling your Champagne wines in the freezer will ruin their aromas and flavours, so plan ahead with buckets of ice and coolers for chilling.
The Champenois often use large coolers that take several bottles at a time to chill their Champagne wines.
 

How to chill Champagne?

In a Champagne bucket: a bottle from your cellar plunged into a mixture of water and ice should reach the right temperature in 15 to 20 minutes.

In the refrigerator: lie the bottle down on the bottom shelf for three or four hours before serving; you can leave it there even longer, provided that the temperature remains constant; this way you will always have a ready chilled bottle to hand.

The right temperature

Champagne is best drunk chilled but never iced. The younger and livelier the Champagne, the cooler it should be served (8ºC). A mature or vintage Champagne will be perfect at 10ºC. Over-chilling will mean that the wine is too cold to release its aromas and flavours.