Celebrity Wine FAQ – Scandal’s Bellamy Young

Bellamy Young as Mellie Grant, courtesy ABC

Actor Bellamy Young has been a journeyman actor most of her life – you may remember her as Ellen Darling in Dirty, Sexy Money. But she’s nabbed a fun role as the scheming, perfect First Lady Mellie Grant in ABC’s Scandal (airing Thursday nights at 10 p.m.). It’s a fun role, and as Young puts it, Mellie’s one of those characters who’s been trained to serve the people.

Young also had a great question for us.

“I just threw a friend a baby shower,” she said. “And we had extra champagne because we had a lot of pregnant people and driving mommies. We well-stocked everything. Can champagne that has been chilled go back to room temperature and then be chilled again? Or do you have to keep it cold once it’s cold?”

It was a very nice shower, apparently. Alas, however, the bottles were still in Ms. Young’s fridge and she needed to put other things in there.

It is true that sudden and frequent temperature changes are not that good for wine, and if the champagne Ms. Young was talking about was an old vintage champagne, we might suggest some extra care in its handling.

However, this was not the case, and the situation Ms. Young was talking about is one we’ve found ourselves in any number of times. Well, not the shower part, but having cooled down more bubbly than was needed for the party or event. And we’ve put the unopened bottles right back into the nano-cellar at home, then chilled the bottles singly as we got around to drinking them. Bubbly does not tend to last long at the old homestead.

You don’t want to open the bottles then put them away. Open bottles should be kept cold and drunk as soon as possible. But it’s perfectly okay to take unopened bottles of bubbly – or any wine – out of the fridge and put them away in your favorite storage spot, preferably one that’s rather dark and keeps a reasonably even, coolish temperature, like a closet or a pantry. Then you can chill them again, as needed, and enjoy.

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