There's something about drinking Prosecco that makes you feel like a queen. It's like, a different kind of drunk.
But it turns out that feeling isn'tjust because you've splashed a few extra quid on your tipple of choice and you're feeling like a baller. Scientific research does actually confirm that being 'Prosecco drunk' - aka feeling giddy real quickly - is a legit thing.
The original research dates back to 2001, but it's obviously become more prominent these days following our current obsession with all fizzy alcoholic beverages (not including Blue WKDs ofc- they had their day in 2006).
In the experiment that took place 17 years ago, Dr Fran Ridout and her team of researchers held a small (but oh so swanky) party for 12 participants in their laboratory. All the guests were given exactly two glasses of Champagne to drink, and in order to ensure each guest was consuming the same proportion of alcohol for their body weight, the amounts in each glass were individually adjusted.
But here's the twist: the champers given to half the group had been made flat - with the bubbles having been purged beforehand using a whisk. The other half of the group got the untouched, fizzy stuff straight from the bottle, and the results were monitored.
What Dr Ridout found was that the alcohol levels of those given the sparkling wine did indeed rise more quickly than those who were drinking the flat drink. This was confirmed when the researchers carried out the same experiment again a week later, but switched over the group who got the flat champagne, and the group who got the sparkling champagne.
The difference in alcohol levels is actually pretty noticeable. After five minutes, drinkers of the fizzy champagne had an average of 0.54 milligrams of alcohol per millilitre of blood, while those drinking the flat booze had an average of just 0.39 milligrams of alcohol per millilitre of blood in comparison.
At the end of the 40-minute experiment, the difference in alcohol levels between drinkers of the flat and the fizzy drinks was still evident. This, it's thought, is because the bubbles in fizzy alcoholic drinks help to move the alcohol more quickly through the stomach or intestine, and into the bloodstream.
So a word of advice for those who still want to drink Prosecco but want to remain less shit-faced than they would with a glass of wine: drink it from a shallow goblet instead of a flute. "The large surface area allows the bubbles to dissipate quickly, whereas flutes preserve the fizz," the New Scientist once wisely advised.
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