Putting the fizz in plonk
QUESTION Was sparkling wine actually invented by Dom Perignon? French Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Perignon (1638-1715) was cellar master of Saint-Pierre d’hautvillers, overlooking the town of epernay, in champagne, but he didn’t invent sparkling wine.
The claim was probably cooked up by the monastery’s 19th- century cellar master, Dom Groussard, in a bid to burnish the abbey’s reputation.
he might even have created the legend that Perignon’s supposed ‘ eureka!’ moment was accompanied by the quote: ‘come quickly! I am drinking the stars.’
Back in the 17th century, the last thing Dom Perignon would have wanted in his wines were bubbles, because the bottles would explode from the pressure. cellar workers wore metal masks to protect their faces from explosions caused by accidentally fermented wine. effervescent wines were known as vin du diable — the devil’s wine.
A far better claim comes from the monks of Saint-hilaire in Limoux, Southern France. There’s documentary evidence from 1531 to support the claim that the brothers developed a technique to create bubbles in their wine, probably by bottling it before fermentation had been completed, a technique known today as methode rurale or ancestrale.
Such wines are still sold as blanquette, which means ‘white’ in Occitan. The name refers to the white hairs on the underside of the leaves of the Mauzac grape used to make the wine.
There’s a widely held belief in the South of France that Dom Perignon stole the idea of sparkling wine on a pilgrimage to Saint-hilaire. This is absurd because the process he’s credited with inventing is the so-called methode champenoise, in which a sparkling wine is created not by capturing first fermentation bubbles but by inducing a second fermentation once the wine has been bottled.
There is little evidence to suggest that Dom Perignon had any interest in sparkling wine; his work concentrated on perfecting white wines through blending grapes, white wines from black grape varieties, and gentle and divided pressing methods.
In fact, there’s reliable evidence that the methode champenoise was invented by an englishman. In December 1662 (six years before Dom Perignon arrived in Saint-Pierre d’hautvillers), Dr christopher Merret presented to the royal Society his paper, Some Observations concerning The Ordering Of Wines. he described the english custom of adding ‘sugar and molasses to all sorts of wine to make them brisk and sparkling’.
Long before Dom Perignon, english vintners were deliberately provoking a second fermentation in the bottle that would add carbon dioxide, and thus bubbles, to their imported wine.
Around 1630, British diplomat and courtier Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) created a bottle strong enough to withstand the pressure of sparkling wine. his glassworks produced wine bottles which were globular in shape, with a high, tapered neck, a collar and a punt.
Martin Caine, St Albans, Herts. QUESTION If a tennis doubles player near the net was given a very oblique shot, he could hit it back from off the court without it actually crossing over the net. Has this ever happened, and is it legal? This is a legitimate shot, not only in doubles but also in singles, as long as all other rules of tennis are complied with.
It isn’t an everyday occurrence, but it does happen at all levels of the game, though it’s more common at the higher levels. This is because the top tournaments have more space at the sides of the courts for them to run into, whereas club courts are quite close to each other, so players are restricted as to the amount of space they have to do the same.
even if the ball goes round the netpost at a lower height than the net, it is still a legitimate shot.
This is one of the shots that players call ‘going for broke’, which means you need to hit a winner from it, because if you don’t, the opponent has an empty court to return the ball into. Peter Bruce, head coach,
Havering Tennis Club. QUESTION Hot Chocolate’s smash hit You Sexy Thing was a B-side. Which other B-sides have outperformed their A-side? Further to earlier answers, when The Beatles released their 11th UK single, the designated A- side was Day Tripper, a ‘forced’ composition written largely by John Lennon. Its flip, We can Work It Out, was an inspired work, largely composed by Paul Mccartney.
radio DJs, aware of the quality of The Beatles ‘underbellies’, soon discovered that We can Work It Out was the superior track and gave it more airplay.
An infuriated Lennon went on the offensive and maintained in contemporary interviews that his composition was the topside. But Macca’s tune won out in the court of public taste, with We can Work It Out hogging the airwaves. The disc as a whole became the Fab Four’s fifth UK single to top one million sales in the UK alone (still a record). Though now retrospectively listed as a double-A, that wasn’t the band’s intention. Their first genuine double-A side was Yellow Submarine/ eleanor rigby, a curious pairing from the exceptional revolver album.
To correct a popular myth relating to their 16th single hello Goodbye/I Am The Walrus, there’s no evidence that I Am The Walrus was considered a Beatles A-side.
The myth of Walrus being diverted to flip status is the product of Lennon’s early Seventies anti-Paul revisionism. The song contained the lyric: ‘ Boy you’ve been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down.’ In the climate of 1967, such a reference meant it could never receive any airplay. It made a great subversive B-side, though.
In the u.S., both sides of a single could chart independently relative to the point of sales requests, juke box and radio airplay. For instance, Yellow Submarine charted at no 2 in the u.S. and the flip, eleanor rigby, was no 11.
In late 1969 the system was simplified. In the final chart using the old method, Something was at no 3 while its flip, come Together, was at no 7. When the sides were combined, it stood at no 1 for a single week.
Mr C. Gibb, London SW19.