The Science Behind the Bubbly

isabotage3 writes "Here is everything you need to know about champagne in time for New Year's — From how to maximize your bubbles to why bubbles follow certain patterns and then suddenly change, to when the time is right to stop studying your bubbly and drink up."

Too late...

You should have told us an hour ago. :)
Over 10 C (50 F) at midnight in northern Germany, FWIW. Yeah I know, just one data point.

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We had rain all morning in Minnesota and it's now snowing and thus ice. We tried to go out to drink some champagne with a friend but turned back less than 3 miles from home after hitting a curb near someone who had jumped the curb and landed in the treeli

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We had unseasonably cold weather here in Pittsburgh in September and October. Should we start calling it "the ice age of 2006"?

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I don't know why we're talking about the weather, but 1C/33F here in Finland. We're still waiting for the winter to start.

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Same in Belgium.
Last week it actually froze, but that didn't last for too long.

Right now it's between 7C and 12C.

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I think winter forgot us this year. Temperature today: 71f in Manning, SC, USA. It's normally around 40 this time of year. And it's been like this since September!

pretty warm

59 F right now in north georgia, 10 PM. The bugs have been out,and we have dandelions blooming in the lawn and we have daffodils coming up!

Usually when this happens we get nailed hard later on in the season. It will most likely hurt the fruit crop (apples

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Well, I always knew America's a year behind the civilized parts of the world. And ATM it's literally true ;-)

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About 25 deg here at midnight (Adelaide, Australia). Cold beer was the order of the night, and a drunken splash in the pool at about 1.00am.

Because

If you're reading this, you will be drinking champagne with another human being.

Bubble size

I wonder if this has anything to do with the size of the bubbles.

I recall reading somewhere that higher quality champagne has smaller bubbles

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Generally, there are two main ways of making sparkling wine:

1: the classic sparkling wine method, a double fermentation process made by taking wine, adding in more yeast and sugar resulting in a natural formation of the gas from within.

2: the soda pop me

Costco has good prices on Veuve Clicquot

Picked up a couple bottles of Veuve Clicquot for $33 each this morning...

Wow - $6 cheaper than most places

That's my favorite appellation, but my wife likes the Demi-Sec

Worth every penny, too.

Picked up a couple bottles of Veuve Clicquot for $33 each this morning...

Yup. In that price range, I'll take that over Moet any time. The VC is a nice, crispy-dry champagne. Having it with some nice marinated, grilled quail and dove breasts served in en

Waiting for the obligatory....

...Wiki link about how "it's all really just sparkling wine unless it's from the Champagne region of France."

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No, no, no.
European champagne is only sparkling white wine unless it's from the Champagne area of France. (Though I understand some European sparkling whites have their own special appelations.)
American champagne is champagne wherever it's grown. I do

Why America cheats.

The US Senate never signed the Treaty of Versailles after WWI, which contained among other things the legal basis for naming wines. So as long as an American winery puts its location on the label, it can use champagne as a generic for sparkling wine.

I, on

No shit?!?!

They just suffered thru a damned war and one of the items to that needed to be in the damned treaty was wine naming? Jesus.

Yes shit?

To keep on a theme, that sparkling rosé that gave its life to make me happy tonight came from Alsace. Now, the bottle is marked as a product of France. So, can we conclude that the Alsace always belonged to France?

Of course, the answer is no. It's

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Oh I know all about Alsace-Lorraine.

Politics suck

We all know politics suck, but COME ON.

My first thought on reading the parent post was not about champagne, but that, while writing up a treaty to end a fucking war, politicians, and no doubt, lobbyists, had to add language for business considerations...

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American champagne is champagne wherever it's grown. I don't think American champagne even has to contain alcohol.

I planted my champagne crop a little late this year and the darn things sprouted alcohol free! ;-)

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> Though I understand some European sparkling whites have their own special appellations.

I dunno about the rest of Europe, in Italy the local sparkling whites' producers are very proud of their denominations, those wines get often preferred to champagne

Insensitive Clod!!

Way to post this 14 minutes after New Year's, you insensitive clod! We British invented Time, you ought to bow to our will!

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(This is a joke)

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Thanks for clearing that up...I really wasn't sure about that.





This is (not?) a joke

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Here in New Zealand it's 1:47PM on 01/01/2007, so it's a bit more than 14 minutes late.

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But you guys didn't invent Time!

Arrogant clod :-)

We British invented Time

You (and the Spanish) invaded countless sovereign nations around the world. Nations where people not only understood the concept of time (perhaps not down to the minute, or by "hours") but in some cases had been tracking celesti

Re:Arrogant clod :-)

Arrogant? The British are too good for Arrogance!!

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I have a great idea: they should have done a duplicate for every timezone!!! Then we could all have a happy new years with maximum bubbles!

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Yeah, if it wasn't for us the whole universe would just be frozen still, so all you colonials should be grateful.

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Al Gore invented time. The British, however, invented Tea Time.

Happy New Year!

To all the geeks who run their computers on UTC: It's one hour past midnight in your favorite timezone! Stop discussing bubble sizes...

Bubbles and cavitation during negative g load

Happy New Year.

As divers know, if you reduce the pressure, bubbles will form. An easy way to do this in a glass of champagne, or beer for that matter, is to toast with your good (or not so good) friend by touching the top of his glass with the bottom of yours.

The champagne in your glass with be compressed on impact, and no bubbles will form. The glass on the bottom will experience an explosive decompression in the liquid, and instantly foam up with little left to drink to the amusement of the whole party except for the unfortunate one.

This takes very little force if executed correctly: Both glass and liquid are quite stiff. An impact of 10cm/sec will easily cause a g-load of the bottom glass in the range -2g to -4g. This will of course result in negative pressure in the liquid, and bubbles will form instanty. The liquid will soon be back to normal pressure, and many of the bubbles cavitate, causing additional local pressure waves.

Happy New Year

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"An explosive decompression in the liquid"? Liquid can't be compressed or decompressed. The air pushing down on the surface of the liquid can be decompressed, which would cause the champagne to bubble, but we're obviously not talking about that. The bub

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The approximation of incompressible fluid probably holds very well for champaigne. But incompressibility simply means no volume change with pressure change. So you, um, let me think, are correct in your description. I am curious tonight whether this method

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Liquids are compressible:
http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae15. cfm [physlink.com]

Liquids are about as compressible as steel or silicone dioxide, and as anyone with a watch knows, the steel in a spring and quarts in a crystal is compressible.

With regular expl

You WANT bubbles to form?

The article talks about ways to make the bubbles form in the champagne. Why would you want to do this? Once a bubble forms, it eventually comes to the surface and is forever lost. Once all the gas has formed bubbles and escaped, the champagne is complet

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You may or may not want to maximum amount of bubbles. If you are not a sparkeling wine connoisseur then you probably dont have an opinion either way. Let me tell you first of all that you wont be bothered by too much but you might be bothered by too litt

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I was wondering about this comment as well. Clearly the point of champagne is not to have the carbon dioxide outgas all at once. The enjoyment of champagne is intended to be leisurely and reflective as well as festive. The bubbles are visually interesti

Questions.....

I ask myself: Do I even care?

14 Minutes?!?

Are you kidding? I've already recovered from my hangover!

The Science Behind the Bubbly
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday January 01, @12:14PM
from the happy-new-years dept.

How about useful information:

such as "How to get a girl to drink it with you?!" or "how to kiss a girl on NYE and NOT get slapped?!"

Sparkling Wine

A point that is often lost on people is that Champagne (as it can only be called when originating from the Champagne region of France) is just a "sparkling wine", and sparkling wine is produced by many countries... it's called Cava in Spain, Sekt in German

I make my own Champagne

There are two methods- Charmat and French- and while Charmat is easier (Kegging beer equipment- use a CO2 wand and seal wine off) it doesn't produce the same flavours as the French method.

Bottle fermented sparkling wines are more difficult to make- riddlin

Re:How about:

that's easy:

->
The science behind the erection

isabotage3 writes
"Here is everything you need to know about champagne in time for New Year's -- From how to maximize your erections to why erections follow certain patterns and then suddenly change, to when the time is right to stop studying your erection and drink up."
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I think it would make an interesting article, indeed.

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It's New Year's Day and I'm hungover, you insensitive clod! Mmm... Champagne with hibiscus flowers floating in it.

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The WSJ article was published Friday; enough time to get to even Australia.