Have you ever had to chill a bottle of sparkling wine real fast by placing it in the freezer? And then, pop and gush!! Argh! You end up red-faced with a mess on the table/floor. Your guests are not impressed.

How do you explain the unexpected gushing out of the bottle knowing that, from high school chemistry, gas is more soluble at lower temperatures and therefore there should be no gushing after leaving a bottle in the freezer for about 20 minutes?

The problem here is that the bottle of sparkling will seem cold and ready to serve, but it isn’t. It typically takes at least 30 minutes, if not more, in a typical freezer to properly chill a bottle of bubbly. If you don’t have that long, sure, chill it for 15 minutes or so but be sure to rotate the bottle GENTLY every 5 minutes so as to mix the wine. Do NOT shake the bottle.

What is happening is that a temperature gradient is developing across the liquid phase, i.e. the wine, from the outside towards the center. So the temperature of the wine can be considerably higher at the center than towards the outside circumference, depending on how long the wine has been chilling and at what temperature. So if you take the bottle out too soon before it has chilled properly, the carbon dioxide gas towards the center is less soluble because of the higher temperature and will want to come out of solution, i.e. the wine.

As you uncork the bottle, the carbon dioxide bubbles will travel at high speed as it tries to escape from the wine to re-establish equilibrium but then encounter a progressively colder medium, and this causes a huge temperature differential with a transfer of high energy that propels carbon dioxide out of the colder medium and thus releasing bubbles uncontrollably.

There you have it.

And oh! BTW, never, ever forget that bottle of bubbly in the freezer — it will freeze, explode and shatter into countless bits of glass and a thick sludge that’ll keep you busy for a while with the clean-up.