49million reasons why bubbly is so lovely
That’s how many bubbles are in a bottle of champagne, a new book reveals. Not to mention corks that fly at 169kmh – and why it gets you tipsy faster than wine!
CHAMPAGNE is a universal pick-meup. As Lily Bollinger – late heiress of the famous champagne house – put it: ‘I only drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad.’ The writer Noël Coward even enjoyed a glass on his own, daily for breakfast.
So, what makes the drink so very special?
Wine expert Davy Zyw has turned his obsession for fizz into a book, I Love Champagne, and has all the answers.
The Scot, who was sommelier at Le Gavroche restaurant in London and now buys wine for one of the UK’s largest online retailers, says: ‘I love champagne’s flavour; I love its fizziness; I love the sense of drama and celebration it brings to any occasion.’
One of his party tricks is to whip off a cork using his iPhone.
Here, we reveal some of the fascinating facts about this symbol of celebration . . .
THE ULTIMATE PARTY DRINK
ABOVE all, it makes you tipsy more quickly than normal wine. The gas – carbon dioxide – in the bubbles raises pressure in the stomach, which helps to force alcohol into the bloodstream via the stomach lining.
This was shown some years ago in tests conducted by the University of Surrey. Alcohol blood levels rose much faster among the bubbly drinkers than those sipping other drinks. After 40 minutes, they averaged 0.7 milligrams per millilitre of blood – compared with 0.58milligrams for the rest of the group. Bubbly also impaired perception – with psychomotor tests showing bubbly drinkers took 200 milliseconds longer on average to notice peripheral objects than when sober.
CORKS TRAVEL UP TO 160KM/H
WHEN popped, a champagne cork normally travels at 65kmh, but some can reach 160kmh. The furthest recorded travel of a cork is more than 175ft.
If a raisin is dropped into a glass of champagne, it will repeatedly fall and rise between the top and the bottom. (This is because the wrinkles give it a larger surface area for bubbles to stick to. When enough bubbles adhere, they make it float – but when they reach the surface they evaporate and the process begins again.)
Usually only three types of grape are used: pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay.
WHO INVENTED CHAMPAGNE?
IT was a combined effort – and happened more by mistake than by design. In France, the Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Perignon (1638-1715) is credited with developing the method of introducing sparkle into the acidic white wines of the region round the city of Reims, now known as Champagne.
He is also immortalised as the brand name of one of the most exclusive champagnes, Dom Perignon, and famously said to fellow monks: ‘Brothers, I’m drinking the stars!’
He had been tasked with finding a way of removing unwanted bubbles from wines. However, he thought the drink would be better if the fizz was harnessed rather than eliminated.
WHO WAS FIRST WITH THE BUBBLES?
WHAT makes the fizz is a process of fermentation, which is encouraged by adding sugar to a normal wine. This technique was discovered by British innkeepers in the 17th century, before Dom Perignon got involved. They imported thin, acidic wine to London and added sugar and brandy to make it taste better and last longer. In doing so, they discovered the wine produced bubbles. By accident, they’d found the process of secondary fermentation, which is what makes champagne so special. Christopher Merret outlined this process to the Royal Society in London in 1662 and within ten years, fellow British wine merchants were importing still wine from France and turning it into sparkling wine, at least a decade before the French.
WHY IT IS SO EXPENSIVE
THE reason is that the process – known as the ‘methode traditionelle’ – requires a second fermentation to take place in the bottle. This is the most complex and time-consuming way to produce any wine in the world. And because champagne can only be made within a small region of France demarcated by law, there are only so many acres of land where the grapes can be grown and thus the volume produced every year is finite.
‘Champagne is the only wine that leaves a woman beautiful after drinking it’ – said Madame de Pompadour, the official mistress of Louis XV.
TOASTING THE FOUR PILLARS OF TASTE
ACCORDING to Davy Zyw, all champagnes are made up of four characteristics which give them their distinct characters: acid, fizz, sweetness and toast.
‘I believe one of the most important aspects of champagne and whether or not you like or dislike a champagne is down to its “toastiness”,’ he says. This refers to a natural process called autolysis, through which yeast cells are killed by their own enzymes.
The effect doesn’t begin for months after the primary fermentation and a minimum of 18 months is needed for the process to work through. Most major champagne-makers age standard wines for two to three years and vintage ones for up to a decade. The ageing period may be that long because the wine gains complexity and creaminess through contact with the yeast lees. These are the amino acids and proteins released as yeast cells break down. They enrich the wine to create a classic champagne character. For Davy, this creates a creamy texture and ‘more flavour of toast, brioche, nougat, nuts, shortbread, biscuits, croissants, caramel, toffee and cream.’ He adds: ‘These flavours are exclusive to champagne, and your enjoyment will be dictated by whether or not toast flavours are desirable to you. I, for one, bloody love them.’ Champagnes age better in magnums, which are twice the size of standard bottles.
WHO SELLS THE MOST?
MOËT & Chandon sells the most by volume, and has been the biggest house since it was founded in 1743.
That’s thanks to its founder Claude Moët, who used his political connections to promote his champagne in the royal court of the early 1700s.
It is not the oldest however: that is Ruinart, a much smaller company that was founded after Louis XV relaxed the rules on selling it in bottles, in 1729, and is still going. Its chalk cellars are the deepest in Champagne, tunnelling 125ft below Reims and the only cellars in the world to have been given Unesco World Heritage status.
NOT FORGETTING THE PINK STUFF
ALL champagne grape juice is clear when pressed, so any colour comes from the skins.
Rosé, or pink champagne can be made two ways; either leaving the juice in contact with the black skins of pinot noir and/or meunier grape to extract colour and flavour.
Or a proportion of red wine can be blended in with the clear wine to produce the desired style and colouring.
THE DEAREST IN THE LAND
ACCORDING to Davy Zyw, because the land where champagne can be made is so limited, the price per acre has rocketed.
Production is restricted by a law passed in 1927 to encompass roughly 34,000 hectares of vineyards which lie east of Paris, spreading across 320 villages.
Davy says to buy a parcel of vines in Côte des Blancs, the prime growing area, ‘You would pay the same price for a penthouse in Manhattan.’
O ADAPTED from I Love Champagne: Fall In Love With 50 Of The World’s Best Champagnes by Davy Zyw, published by Freight Books at €14.99. © Davy Zyw 2017
340million bottles are produced a year, with demand outstripping supply. The pressure in a bottle is about 90lb per square inch, equivalent to the pressure in a double-decker bus tyre.