Slashdot Mirror
For Champagne Bubbles, Smaller Is Better
Roland Piquepaille writes "During this holiday season you don't need a special occasion to drink champagne. You can do it everyday, providing you use moderation and common sense. But did you know that champagne taste better when it has tiny bubbles? This is the result of a very serious study published by the American Chemical Society (ACS) and more recently found by the Discovery Channel. And why do you think champagne taste better when carrying smaller bubbles? The answer is pretty obvious. More bubbles are releasing the champagne's flavor and aroma into your mouth. This summary gives you more details. In the mean time, let's all drink champagne!"
And here I thought taste was subjective...
In Italy, sparkling wine is called asti spumanti. In Germany you can get a local Sekt. South Africa has cape classic. I'm not too crazy about any of these, but chacun a son gout.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Am I just weird or does most alcohol taste like crap? I can't place the taste of Champagne.. it's almost like drinking vinegar. Why would people pay for drinking something so nasty? Then beer... it's like moose piss or something. I'll take a good old Diet Coke anyday over alcohol. The only thing I seem to be able to like is a little orange juice mixed with vodka, but only enough that I can't taste the vodka. If I can taste the vodka then it's just nasty. Oh and Long Island Ice teas are pretty good. Maybe I'm just gay and don't know it.
does this hold true for beer?
The sediment that is produced after the sugar and yeast have made these little bubble is removed by freezing the neck of the bottle whilst it's upside down and then removing the plug of 'goo'.
That's why Champagne bottles have that large foil top - historically, it was used to cover up the fact that you were being short-changed. Now that we have standards and things, these days, they fill the gap with a similar blend before it's corked.
Who knows why they didn't do that before...
If you've lived in Spain, or travelled there extensively, you will find that the most Spaniards refer to cava as 'champn' and I have never seen anybody get 'cold and unfriendly'. In Catalua and parts of Valencia is where 'cava' is produced, by legal agreement and some of these are excellent and rival the best French champagnes. Two that stand out are 'Torre Oria' and 'Juve y Camps'. The popular Freixenet, which is sold in the States is quite good, but doesn't really match these that I mentioned.
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
It's been known since the Dom popped his first couple of corks.
Anyway, be sure to always drink from leaded crystal, which has the right sort of pore structure to support continuous beads of tiny bubbles (given a good wine sample - Korbel ain't never gonna taste good).
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Truly, a very fine champagne style wine is produced by the Summerhill Estate Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia. Their secret is to age the wine under a carefully constructed pyramid so that "all the atoms spin the same direction".
"The site was carefully chosen. First a check of interfering energies was exhausted (i.e. underground streams, electric current exposure, gas line interference, etc.). Then the earth under the pyramid was compacted to 100%. Then a surveyor lined up the square base to coincide with exact True North as it is here in Kelowna. The area was then checked by an astronomer who lines up the foundation to the North Star precisely. It is interesting to note that much excitement took place when we aligned the site because the astronomer's news that almost to the day, 1997 was "the year of the Great Pyramid"."
"The pyramid effectiveness may also be explained using Einstein's concept of Tachyons and Tardyons. Tachyons are particles of invisible energy that move faster than the speed of light (that means it is faster than 186,282 miles per second). Tardyons behave in the opposite way, moving below or at the speed of light. This brings about the theory of negative space-time. [Negative space-time is 180 degrees from positive space-time. In positive space-time living organisms change from life to deterioration. In negative space-time, life moves from deterioration to rejuvenation. It is said that the pyramid serves as the interface between positive and negative space-time."
Scoff if you wish, but they make some very, very fine wine.
Three Squirrels
Firstly, Veuve Clicquot are an excellent producer. Secondly, you got one of the finest years in a very long time. If memory serves me well, there hasn't been a better year since.
I personally had a 1990 Lanson and it was brilliant.
Don't expect the non-vintage stuff to be a patch on what you had, btw. Personally, I drink cheap fizz from Spain or regional France instead of NV champagne.
From my saltwater aquarium days, I noticed that bubble size is related to higher salinity; which is also related to water density. I imagine these also affect surface tension too.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
I only read the discovery article, but the science seems a bit weak to me.
From what I gather, they took a number of sparkling wines that were rated of different qualities and then tried to determine the difference. Given this methodology, its not at all surprising that they found that the size of the bubbles was the differentiator since I was under the impression it was already well known that smaller bubbles was better.
If the wine tasting community already believed that smaller bubbles were better and that influenced their ranking, then it shouldn't be too surprising that the study turned up a correlation.
Perhaps I'm not giving the study enough credit -- because Discovery doesn't go into that level of detail... but I hope that they used some sort of blind taste test w/ people other than trained wine tasters to establish the ranking system for the different champagnes that they tested...
Evolution: love it or leave it
and americans love to laugh at europeans (EU) with their stupid and blatantly anticompetitive "named origin" rules that tolerate such bullshit.
You mean as opposed to Americans who take out a patent a variety of rice and then register the trademark 'Basmati', even though this particular rice has been traditionally associated with a strain that grows in the Himalayas for the last few hundred years?
The reality is that there's nothing protectionist about it. You're absolutely free to sell as much of your 'American Cheese' in Europe as you like (bwahahahahah.) You just can't call it Camenbert. This strategy has the advantage of providing consumers with an accurate description of the goods being sold. The alternative lays the way open to any attempt to rip off both producers and consumers by fraudulent and deceptive practices -- and still seeks protectionism for your inferior products -- as in the case of your BasNasty rice.
However, I do understand that large numbers of Americans think that consumers shouldn't have any protection from rapacious and deceptive trade practices -- which is probably why so much spam originates from your shores.