Popping the corks and toasting with a fizzy glass of champagne is a New Year's tradition.
Champagne has a lavish history dating back to the 16th century. Long before we started drinking bubbly to ring in the new year, European aristocrats were popping bottles at their royal parties.
Only the elite drank champagne at the time because it was so expensive, historian Kolleen Guywrote in her book about the wine's history. It was even the drink of choice for Louis XIV.
Drinking champagne as celebratory tradition has endured for centuries, as New Year's evolved from a religious holiday to a secular one.
"After the French Revolution, it became a part of the secular rituals that replaced formerly religious rituals," Guy told LiveScience. "You could 'christen a ship' without a priest, for example, by using the 'holy water' of champagne."
Eventually, winemakers started developing the technology to bottle carbonated wine. Dom Perignon added two safety features to its wines to avoid bottle explosions: thicker glass bottles to withstand the pressure and a rope snare to keep corks in place. The bottles became perfect for popping on New Year's Eve.
The price of champagne declined, and producers started marketing it to common folk in the 1800s. Since the wine was long associated with nobility, ads triumphed it as an aspirational drink.
These new customers couldn't afford to drink champagne as a table wine, but they could afford it for special occasions. Champagne's production skyrocketed from 300,000 to 20 million bottles per year between 1800 and 1850, as the world started ordering it more and more for ship christenings and new year celebrations (The French established legal exclusivity to call their wines champagne in 1891, so any other bubbly is now called sparkling wine).
Today, champagne still marks the joy of the new year. "Champagne does this symbolically, but also visually, since it overflows in abundance and joy," Guy said.
Cheers to that.
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