13 Way To Use Leftover Champagne
It may seem impossible to open a bottle of Champagne and not finish it, but it happens! Cue Taylor Swift's "Champagne Problems." We're used to simply popping a cork back into an unfinished bottle of wine to keep it fresh, but what can you do with a half-full bottle of bubbly?
You can actually keep your Champagne from going flat by keeping it cold with a special stopper made for sparkling beverages, but if it's too late for that, you don't have to pour it all down the drain. Champagne, a classic sparkling wine made with grapes from Champagne, France, is quite versatile and can be used as a fizzy addition to cocktails, in various recipes, and even as a beauty product. From actual Champagne showers to boozy desserts, we've listed 13 ways for you to put your leftover bubbles to good use. Don't let a drop of it go to waste, and check out these options for repurposing your leftovers.
Make ice cubes
Whether it's a bag of blueberries that are about to turn, an abundance of homemade pasta sauce, or a few glugs of leftover Champagne, we'll always strongly urge you to turn towards the freezer before you open your garbage pail. Freezing foods and liquids can help them last much longer than they would in a refrigerator, and you'll still be able to use them in a number of delicious ways.
Pour your leftover Champagne into an ice cube tray and let it freeze overnight. Then, you can use your frozen Champagne cubes in orange juice for extra-chilled mimosas or as flavorful, boozy ice cubes in a sangria. If you've got some popsicle molds, you can take this a step further. Chop up fresh fruit and herbs and freeze the Champagne into the perfect adult-friendly summer treat! You can also use Champagne ice cubes in cooking by simply tossing the pre-portioned cube into a hot pan.
Shake up Champagne cocktails
Champagne is often considered a luxury. Since it can only be made with specific grapes from a specific region in France, it isn't as widely available as other sparkling wines are, which means it's usually on the pricier side. Champagne is also made with a labor-intensive, complex process that gives it a supreme, high-quality body and flavor. As such, it's common for drinkers to enjoy Champagne as is — it's not the kind of beverage that requires a boost from mixers or syrups.
However, if you're dealing with flat, leftover Champagne or simply some extra that you'd like to make something fun with, there are plenty of tasty ways to incorporate sparkling wine into cocktails. Try a classic cocktail for drinking Champagne, like a French 75, which includes gin, lemon, simple syrup, and Champagne. Even if your Champagne is a bit flat, it'll still add some wine flavor and a lovely little fizz to a cocktail like this. Use your leftover Champagne as a sparkling base and get creative — add juices, liquor, fruit, and herbs to create tasty cocktails with a delightful extra kick of carbonation.
Bathe in the bubbly
Yes, you read that right; we suggest you bathe in Champagne. Not only does a Champagne bath sound like an incredibly luxurious experience, but it can also actually be super beneficial for your skin. Incorporating wine into beauty routines this way is a pretty common trend. In spas, bathing in wine or using wine grapes for their beauty benefits is often part of a practice called vinotherapy.
With vinotherapy, the antioxidants and other properties found in grapes — and transferred to wine, like Champagne — can nourish skin, which is why there are lots of Champagne-infused beauty products on the market. If you've got some Champagne on hand, you can create a calming concoction to submerge yourself in for the ultimate self-care ritual. A common mixture is to combine Epsom salt, powdered milk, and Champagne in hot bathwater. The result is a soak that can help detoxify skin, minimize pores, and leave skin looking toned.
Make beauty products
Bathing in Champagne isn't the only way that you can incorporate it into your beauty regimen. The reason Champagne has become so prominent in skincare routines is that the wine contains beneficial antioxidants and vitamins that make them a phenomenal addition to beauty products, both for the face and body. It can also function as a beauty product on its own.
High levels of vitamins E and C, along with the natural acidic properties found in Champagne, make it wonderful for tightening, brightening, toning, and softening skin while also facilitating an even skin tone. As such, lots of beauty brands sell their own Champagne-infused face masks, toners, and serums.
No need to head to Sephora, though. We've got a cheaper suggestion for you. Try using chilled Champagne just as you would any other toner. Simply dab some of it onto a cotton pad and swipe it around your face. Finish with a moisturizer and glow all day long!
Enjoy boozy fruits
If you've ever garnished your mimosas with fruits or sprinkled some berries into a chilled glass of sparkling wine, you know that alcohol and fruit complement each other well. Sparkling wine seeps into the fruits, minimizing their sweetness but adding a refreshing, tart, alcoholic bite.
Even if your leftover Champagne has gotten a bit flat, you can still use it to soak fruits in. This will leave you with boozy, fruity bites that make an elegant, refreshing poolside snack or pre-party amuse-bouche. Fruits soaked in Champagne can also be used in other mixed drinks; this way, you're adding the flavors of both fresh fruit and Champagne without ever having to purchase a new bottle!
Stone fruits like peaches, plums, and apricots are all amazing foods that pair well with Champagne, thanks to mild acidity and slight sweetness. Berries and tart apples also complement Champagne well because they're not overly sugary. The market for Champagne-soaked strawberries is large, and we make up a large portion of interested consumers. Soak the berries in Champagne and a bit of vodka for an hour before rolling them in sugar for a sweet, spiked treat filled with antioxidants.
Cook with it
You've likely cooked with wine or liquor before. There are various recipes that should be made with wine, whether to add extra flavor or some necessary acidity. Champagne is a sparkling wine, so you may be wondering if it'll add a weirdly fizzy component to dishes, but fortunately, any heat used when cooking will diminish the bubbles in Champagne. Normally flat sparkling wine is a bad thing, but not in this case.
As an ingredient, Champagne offers a tart, somewhat citrusy, toasty flavor to the dishes where it is applied. Since it's a white sparkling wine, you're better off using it in dishes that you would actually pair with white wines, such as seafood or chicken, rather than in hearty stews or recipes with red meat. A great way to use Champagne is in a creamy sauce for pasta or chicken. We recommend trying this lovely Champagne chicken recipe that features a luxuriously rich sauce infused with zinging wine notes for an easy, elegant meal.
Whip up a vinaigrette
If you have some leftover Champagne but abhor the thought of having to turn on your stove, don't worry. Champagne can be used as an ingredient in many recipes, including those that don't involve tons of work.
When it comes to store-bought versus homemade, the debate over which is better can vary depending on the food in question. Take ketchup, for example. There are plenty of inexpensive varieties of ketchup lining grocery store shelves, and we know it's made of tomatoes, but do we really want to figure out how to make it at home? Ketchup is one of those foods we feel perfectly justified in buying pre-made at the store. Salad dressings, however?
They're easier to make than you'd think. A vinaigrette recipe doesn't take much more than vinegar, oil, and seasoning. Plus, making it at home ensures that no unhealthy or questionable ingredients will make their way into your salad. That bit of leftover Champagne in your fridge is practically begging to be made into this tangy dressing, so grab a whisk and put it to good use. Concocting a savory vinaigrette using garlic, Dijon, extra-virgin olive oil, and Champagne will brighten up your meal and give you just enough lavishness to relish that once-boring pile of greens.
Bake Champagne cupcakes
As with a homemade vinaigrette, when you put the word "Champagne" in front of something, it instantly feels fancier. Cupcakes are cute and tasty, but Champagne cupcakes sound like a divine delicacy we'd only find on the dessert spread at a Kardashian holiday party. Plus, they require just enough work to keep Kim K. from ridiculing you without (really) taking that much effort.
Though they sound fancy, Champagne-infused cupcakes are as easy to make as any other cupcake. A Betty Crocker-style pink Champagne cupcake recipe that features both cupcakes and frosting spiked with the bubbly beverage is supremely decadent. They're made with boxed cake mix and a few other staple pantry ingredients, though the milk you'd regularly add is swapped for Champagne. Similar to adding seltzer water to your baking recipes, the bubbles from the carbon dioxide in Champagne can actually act as a leavening agent, making for fluffy, airy cupcakes. The alcohol will mostly bake out of the cupcakes, but you'll taste it most in the frosting. Overall, each bite will be sugary sweet with a delightful hint of viniferous zest.
Enhance your macarons
As far as desserts go, few do the top of the food pyramid more elegantly than the French. Classic French macarons are wonderfully light, airy, delicate treats that are as visually appealing as they are tasty. Making macarons involves a relatively intricate process requiring more precision and prep time than your typical cookie-baking might. Since macarons take a little extra magic to make, they're often served on special occasions or are treated as an elevated kind of dessert.
Add Champagne and roses to the mix, and you've got one positively posh cookie. Don't feel intimidated, though. Our rose Champagne macarons recipe is the perfect way to repurpose your leftover Champagne, even if you're used to baking with pre-made cookie dough. Follow the steps to create botanical, rose-water-infused macaron shells. Then, pipe a divine swirl of rose buttercream around the edge of each cookie, grace them with a dollop of Champagne-infused jelly, and sandwich the shells together for a refined, floral treat.
Steam your seafood
Expert wine and food pairing can get pretty granular, but generally, red wines go better with deeply-flavored red meats, while white wines pair nicely with lighter proteins like chicken or seafood. Champagne, in particular, is often sipped alongside saltier dishes like fresh oysters or french fries.
You can take the Champagne and seafood combo to the next level by using your leftover Champagne to cook your seafood. When cooked with Champagne, seafood's natural fishiness is balanced by the wine's crisp flavors. Cooking seafood in white wine is such a delicious combination that the French actually have a name for mussels steamed in white wine: moules marinières. When steaming shellfish like mussels or clams, use Champagne in your broth for an infusion of sweet, luxurious flavor. Another tip for cooking mussels is adding rich butter, aromatic garlic and shallots, and crusty bread for the ultimate summer delicacy that is perfectly scoopable. You may have drained the leftover Champagne while cooking, but you'll probably want to open a fresh bottle of bubbly, too!
Turn your Champagne into bread
If bread-making already feels intimidating to you, it may feel blasphemous to consider using bubbly as part of the process. But, if you've heard of beer bread before, then this option for leftover Champagne might not seem so crazy. In fact, the truth about beer bread is that it's an ingenious addition, and Champagne is an equally great bread hack.
Making bread isn't as difficult as it seems; at its most basic, it simply requires flour, salt, water, and a leavening agent. It's common to use carbonated beverages as an ingredient in bread-making since the fizzy aspect works as a leavening agent in these recipes. Most recipes for bread made with Champagne use room-temperature sparkling wine in place of water. When left to warm up, Champagne functions similarly to beer in that it can help your bread rise, though the big difference here is that malt in beer adds a deeper flavor, while Champagne may result closer to soda bread. If you've got leftover beer, go ahead and make a loaf. If you have leftover Champagne on hand, you do the same!
Spike your ice cream
When we get the chance to indulge, we like to get as indulgent as possible. Go big or go home, right? So, the next time we have leftover Champagne, we'll be sure to use it to make a dreamy, decadent dessert. Champagne can be used as an ingredient in lots of boozy desserts like mimosa cookies, macarons, cupcakes, and even ice cream.
Boozy ice cream puts a refined, adult spin on a fun, youthful treat. The alcohol flavor is usually minimized by whichever syrups and toppings go into the actual ice cream, so the result is a creamy, sweet treat with a pleasant little kick. Have some fun in the kitchen with your leftover Champagne and combine it with lemon, whipping cream, milk, sugar, and egg yolk to freeze into a luxurious and zippy ice cream. Get creative experimenting with your own recipes, and serve this impressive dessert at your next summer dinner party.
Upgrade your soups
If your favorite soup is a big bowl of chilled Champagne, we've got some culinary inspiration. Wines are often used in cooking to deglaze pans, enhance flavor, and add acidity. This is true for wine-based pasta sauces, wine-braised meats, and even soups.
The title "Champagne soup" may be given to a number of recipes, including Champagne-based cocktails and hot or cold soups made with the stuff. A chilled Champagne soup recipe from Emeril Lagesse calls for chopped fruits, sugar, fresh mint, and crystallized ginger and results in one of the most layered, complex, and unique bowls you're likely to have this year. Served cold as a dessert or starter, it's basically a fun way to enjoy a Champagne cocktail with a spoon. If you love hearty, hot soups, however, you can make those with Champagne as well. Consider a recipe that substitutes leftover Champagne for traditional components while leveraging those back-of-the-fridge ingredients. Skip the chicken broth, combine your sparkling booze with bouillon, add heavy cream, Brie cheese, and shallots for a grand, creamy soup with an incredible depth of flavor.