Why Champagne Is Better Than Beer for a Super Bowl Party
Beer is the official drink of football, but perhaps it doesn’t always have to be. When it comes to the biggest game of the year (in the United States), the best drink to serve at a Super Bowl party, in my expert, respected and very popular opinion, is champagne.
Your football party is a party, after all, and nothing says party time quite like opening a bottle of champagne (or other sparkling wine if you’re on a budget). Only two teams can play this game a year, and if one turns out to be your favorite, you deserve a bubbly holiday treat for helping them make it all the way. (After all, without your support and strict adherence to game day superstitions, they would not have made it.)
In addition to mood and general fun, champagne is also the best addition to fatty, salty foods. It’s a great tasting cleanser, bright tongue repair, clean mouthwash your mouth needs after seven hot wings and 3/4 cup onion sauce. The acidity and fizziness of champagne eliminates the oiliness of cheesy pizza, the saltiness of a plate of nachos, and the fat content of a chicken wing, allowing you to eat more pizza, nachos, and chicken wings. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that why you threw the party in the first place? Eating Doritos, watching ads and having fun?
Again, if you feel like this step is prohibitively expensive, there’s no shame in picking up a bottle of cheap sparkling wine from Italy, Spain, or the wine regions of the United States. A 750 ml bottle of Trader Joe’s Blanc de Blanc costs a whopping six US dollars, is incredibly dry, and tastes far better than it should. (And thanks to its low residual sugar content, it causes less hangovers than many cheaper champagnes.)
If odd sex and masculine allegiances make you just can’t imagine sipping wine at Sunday’s Superbowl, there’s always beer champagne. I don’t think it cleans up the palate as well as sparkling wine, but cheap, mostly bland beer is still pretty good at restoring the tongue and won’t fill you up like a microbrewer.