I don’t think I ever fully appreciated the pressure inside a bottle of sparkling wine until I returned from a three-week vacation to find the power was out in one of my refrigerators.

My garage refrigerator was used largely for prosecco and other inexpensive wines, as well as beer, water, energy drinks and White Claw. I don’t know how long the power to the refrig was out, but by the smell of the spoiled food in the freezer part, it was at least a week.

I dumped all of the beer and wine, but was worried about the sparkling wine bottles. There is about 80 pounds of pressure per square inch in one bottle and is enough to damage an eye if it isn’t handled carefully. The first cork came out with a loud pop and bubbled over into the sink. The other bottles were another matter: one cork came out with such force it knocked the bottle out of my hand and literally showed both me and the outdoor counters around me.

The remaining corks exploded out of the bottles and into the 12-foot ceiling as if they were NASA rockets. By the end of the ordeal, I was sopping wet with champagne and a 12-foot parameter around me was doused with bubbles. Fortunately, I did all of this outside. Still, the cleanup was extensive.

All of this is written as a warning to anyone who leaves a bottle of sparkling wine in a hot car or, like me, an un-airconditioned garage in the middle of the summer. I was very luck none of the bottles exploded — a testimonial to the glass maker.