Abstract: A plastic bottle has a champagne base that includes a planar standing ring located between a lower margin of a convex heel of the base and a lowermost portion of a central concavity within the standing ring. By making the inside vertical radius of the convex heel lower margin and central concavity lowermost portion sufficiently small, the bottle is shown to exhibit increased top load strength without any increase in plastic. The bottle also has a larger standing ring diameter leading to a more stable bottle.