Food & Wine USA - (10)October 2020

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104 OCTOBER 2020

Muselet: The wire cage

that fits over a Champagne

cork, preventing it from

popping prematurely

Plaque de Muselet: The

metal disk affixed to the top

of the muselet, often branded

with a logo or personal-

ized with a design. People

who collect the decorated

plaques de muselet are called

placomusophiles.

Mousse: The foam that

tops Champagne when it’s

poured into a flute

Collerette: The ring of

bubbles formed by the

bubble chains that ride up the

sides of a flute once Cham-

pagne has been poured

CHAMPAGNE SPEAK BY THE NUMBERS

6

Number of twists it takes

to loosen the muselet on

a Champagne bottle

177’9”

The longest recorded

cork flight, at Woodbury

Vineyards in New York

24.8 MPH

The velocity a

Champagne cork can

reach once popped

40

Number of 750-ml.

bottles in a Melchizedek,

the largest of all

Champagne bottles,

which holds 30 liters

of Champagne

Bubbles in a standard

750-ml. bottle of

Champagne

49 MILLION

THE MYTH THAT FRENCH MONK DOM PÉRIGNON i n v e n t e d

Champagne is popular, but it was English scientist Christopher

Merrett who discovered the process of secondary fermentation

in a sealed bottle, which is how sparkling wine is produced, in

the 1660s. But what good are bubbles if the bottle they’re in can’t

hold them? The story of the Champagne bottle as we know it,

with its sloped shoulders that help contain pressure, begins

with Georg Christian von Kessler. Kessler established the first

German sparkling wine cellar in 1825. In 1826, half of Kessler’s

first vintage was destroyed when the sparkling wine exploded,

starting a chain reaction that smashed about 4,000 bottles to

pieces. Kessler needed an unbreakable bottle, and he found

it at Buhlbach Glassworks factory in the Black Forest. Owner

Johann Georg Böhringer designed a bottle called the Buhlbacher

Schlegel, which could withstand the pressure of carbonation

and allowed for a more even distribution of pressure through

the invention of the stülpboden, an indentation at the bottom

of the bottle, now known as a punt. The glass itself was green,

to protect the wine from sunlight. By 1856, glassblowers were

making up to 40 bottles per hour to accommodate international

demand; the factory produced about 100 million bottles through

1909, when it closed down. Since then, Buhlbach Glassworks

has been reopened as a museum and cultural park, preserved

for tourists to peek into this bubble of history. —NINA FRIEND

Fiz zics 101

“Come quickly; I am drinking the stars!”

LEGEND

Dom Pérignon said these

words upon tasting

sparkling wine for the first time.

TRUTH

It’s a great line, but

it actually comes from a 19th-

century advertising campaign.

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