Tiffenii Mumphrey isn’t a big drinker. But on election night 2016, she readied a bottle of Korbel champagne to toast to America’s first female president.
“I wanted to celebrate that moment by doing something that was unconventional for me, which is to have a glass of champagne,” she says.
As John King’s “Magic Wall” turned into a sea of red, it became increasingly clear there would be no Hilary Clinton victory speech. Mumphrey returned the green-hued bottle to a cabinet in her East Texas home, where it has remained untouched for eight years.
“I’m saving it for a time where I feel, as a woman, safe in this country again,” she says. “I will maybe open it if we could indeed get our first woman president.”
Mumphrey is one of a number of women whose unopened champagne bottles from 2016 have transformed into potable markers of progress. As Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris vies to break the ultimate glass ceiling, Mumphrey and others are eyeing the bottles they stored almost a decade ago.
One such woman is Virginia resident Deborah Usry, whose 2016 election night watch party left revelers in “tears.” Although she had bubbly ready to pop for her nearly two dozen guests, no one wanted a sip. “Gradually, as the evening went on, people started leaving,” she says. “I just put that one bottle away.”
Usry returned the Saint-Hilaire brut to her wine cooler, where she has kept it for eight years. “I’ve had plenty of champagne between now and then, and I have other champagne, but now it’s become a symbol of women’s perseverance,” she says.
She has vowed to drink the bottle when America elects its first female president. “I hope to have a reason to open it.”
Usry’s brut might not taste the same as it did in 2016. Most nonvintage champagnes typically lose their flavor after three to four years, while vintage bottles can last for over double that amount. But politics supersedes taste for these 2016 champagne savers.
Clinton was seen by many of her supporters as the culmination of the women’s suffrage movement. After she was officially nominated at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, organizers aired a video montage featuring America’s presidents before the screen symbolically shattered and Hilary Clinton appeared. “I cannot believe we just put the biggest crack in the glass ceiling yet,” she said in the video. “If there are any little girls out there who stayed up late to watch, let me just say, I may become the first woman president, but one of you is next.”
