So, you’re ready to pop the cork on a bottle of champagne as the countdown begins on New Year’s Eve. But have you ever thought about where that tradition came from? It may not be as old as you think.
“By about 1800, particularly in America, there was this custom on New Year’s of staying up till midnight, and going door-to-door and knocking on people’s doors, and expecting to get some sort of drink in exchange,” said Kira Dietz, assistant director of special collections and university archives at Virginia Tech.
“As this became increasingly common among all social classes, people would knock on your door and expect a drink and some sort of treat to go along with it,” she said.
In the early 1800s, champagne was not that drink. Back then, it was a drink only the upper class enjoyed. It was expensive because making it was a very complicated process. Keeping it fizzy was even more difficult.
It wasn’t until quite a few years after the late-night drinking tradition began that champagne was more affordable and accessible to the masses.
“By the mid-19th century, there were technologies that were great to actually keep it bottled and fizzy,” Dietz said. “And, more interestingly, once they started corking it, the idea of popping the champagne bottle as an event became a kind of New Year’s tradition.”
And the rest, as they say, is history.
