I know that many of my twitter and blog followers like to drink the odd drink so I thought I would share this scientific paper on how to pour the perfect glass.
J. Agric. Food Chem., 2010, 58, 8768–8775
I should firstly say that my favourite bit of the paper was the acknowledgement:
“We thank Champagne Pommery for regularly supplying us with various champagne samples” – It is not often that a champagne supplier gets an honourable mention. I do think it is time I thought about a postdoc in France…?
There are apparently two ways of pouring champagne:
Champagne-like way of serving: champagne is poured vertically and results in foaming
Beer-like way of serving: champagne is poured with the glass at an angle, causing less foaming
Various techniques, including measuring the carbon dioxide content at a range of temperatures and IR thermography, were used to determine the best method for pouring Champagne. Read the paper to see lots of pretty pictures.
Unsurprisingly, the paper concludes that the method for Champagne pouring should be revisited and the beer-like pouring approach should be adopted. I can’t see the Champagne snobs adhering to this, even with scientific evidence against them!
So next time you pour a glass of fizz, think of the chemistry going on inside the glass.
Ha, I remember that paper when it came out and their acknowledgement of the Champagne Supplier. I definitely talked to my labmates about possibly getting into food and wine chemistry.
Thanks Jess, very interesting. For those that don’t have ACS or institutional access, the link is http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf101239w.
There is also this paper (kindly shared by Andy):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201207299/abstract
Thanks Jess and also to Andy
I can’t wait to casually cite this paper the next time someone’s pouring champagne.