Happy New Year: The Secret Filth of Champagne Bubbles

Personally, I find champagne to be the giver of unwanted morning trauma and limit myself to a single glass. If you’re serving up the bubs this New Year’s Eve, however, take this bit of seasonal advice from the Associated Press and wipe those glasses with a natty towel:

In the latest dispatch from the frontiers of champagne science, researchers find that hollow cellulose fibers knocked off a cloth or paper towel used to dry a flute act as bubble-formation, or “nucleation,” sites. As a result, glasses wiped with a towel show “an excess of effervescence,”

Of course, folk wisdom says the more bubbles, the more quickly the body absorbs the alcohol, so be sure to chase any flutes of that foul liquid with pulverized glass shards in a suspension of grain alcohol.

Be aware: don’t drink and drive, despite the fact that we live in a country designed to encourage the behavior; if for no other reason, there will be an abundance of police checkpoints this evening. It’s only New Year’s Eve once a year—take a cab, even if it will cost you. We will not bail you out if you’re tossed in the clink.

Lastly, the best hangover cure I’ve ever found is to wash down a couple of aspirins with as much water as you can chug before you lay down to pass out. Alcohol and analgesics may be a liver slagger, but it seems to take the edge off in the morning long enough to let you stumble into the kitchen to make the first pot of coffee.

Be safe and have fun. See you next year!

The science behind the joy of the bubbly [AP/NWF Daily News via /.]