Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Pierre Clark. There's Charles Jacques Bryant. Jerry. Oh nice, rolling.
Speaker 1: Are we allowed to tell everyone your last name, Jerry?
Speaker 1: We've done it before. Okay, what if they go try
Speaker 1: to find her on Facebook and find out she doesn't
Speaker 1: actually exist? It's all just a plant, fake Facebook page
Speaker 1: that we've created. I know that she she is an
Speaker 1: actual plant, right that crows in the corner feed me.
Speaker 1: I am worried about this one. I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and say it. Oh, why you were worried about
Speaker 1: the wine one, for the same reasons we didn't do
Speaker 1: the wine I know, that's why. That's exactly why reason
Speaker 1: exactly for those reasons. No one knows anything about champagne.
Speaker 1: People spend life times learning this stuff. Yes, but we
Speaker 1: have a show, and everyone knows that we don't spend
Speaker 1: a lifetime learning about what we talk about that We
Speaker 1: just do our research and we try to find the
Speaker 1: most interesting stuff to explain how something works. I know,
Speaker 1: but these with anytime it's something where someone is like
Speaker 1: such a huge like where it's such a big thing
Speaker 1: for so many people. Uh, I just know we're gonna
Speaker 1: mess up pronunciations. Since French, so champagne, right, champagny. I
Speaker 1: think that's how bugs Bunny always pronounced it. So you're
Speaker 1: you're following a grand tradition. I didn't know he was
Speaker 1: a drinker. Well, we are going to talk about Champagne's
Speaker 1: a little light. Now do you like champagne? I love champagne,
Speaker 1: love it. I don't. I mainly drink sparkling wine and
Speaker 1: I don't really drink champagne itself. But buddy, this article
Speaker 1: made me want to drink some champagne. Well you do
Speaker 1: a little prosecco? WELLKVA, sure, I don't really discriminate, Okay,
Speaker 1: I do. I don't drink any of it. You don't
Speaker 1: like champagne, huh Nah, I don't like sparkling wine. It's
Speaker 1: not just not it's not for chuck as they say,
Speaker 1: love it, man um. I particularly love Shandon out in California.
Speaker 1: I will say, one time at a party, though many
Speaker 1: years ago, like in the nineties, I drank a lot
Speaker 1: of just champagne, only champagne. This might be why you
Speaker 1: don't like champagne. The only time in my life. No,
Speaker 1: I actually, uh, I felt like a twelve year old girl.
Speaker 1: That was wonderful. That's your problem. Champagne is no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean silly and oh bubbly. It's fun like I
Speaker 1: played hop scotch and stuff like that. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: that's terrible. Why would you ever want to do that again.
Speaker 1: I don't mean I felt like a girl because I
Speaker 1: was drinking champagne. That's what I thought. You meant. Well,
Speaker 1: there's your problem. Champagne is not a girly drink. No,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who do
Speaker 1: think that. Buddy, I will drink pink champagne. You don't
Speaker 1: with your finger up at a bull fight. Oh gross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta do something to wash the pain away. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just not for me. Uh. And that gave me
Speaker 1: a such a bad headache the next day. I didn't
Speaker 1: go back to the well. I'll have you know, I
Speaker 1: have someone. If someone wants to toast me, yeah, I
Speaker 1: won't go. No, I'm not drinking that. Well, you were
Speaker 1: probably drinking pretty sweet champagne, weren't you. Usually the higher
Speaker 1: the sugar content and anything, that, the more um of
Speaker 1: a hangover. You're gonna have Yeah, I don't know. Huh, well,
Speaker 1: I love it good. You mean I've been to Shandon twice. Okay,
Speaker 1: went on Shandon cruise once. Wow, big fans of Shandon.
Speaker 1: Where is that? Hint? Hint? It's out in um Napa.
Speaker 1: Napa Valley's famously attached to Mowett and Shandon. And then
Speaker 1: Shandon went and said, Hey, we're gonna open up something
Speaker 1: in California too. Got you just like cool? Because their
Speaker 1: Tara war is it's heavy beat, it's good, good ter war.
Speaker 1: And that's another thing too. This is what I'm nervous about.
Speaker 1: I'm not nervous about getting it wrong. I'm nervous about
Speaker 1: coming across like it's just a complete jackass sophisticate. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not at all. I just like Champagne. I'm I
Speaker 1: know more now about Champagne doing this research for the
Speaker 1: last couple of days than I ever had before. So
Speaker 1: I definitely don't put myself out there. It's like a
Speaker 1: um an expert in any way, shape or form. All right,
Speaker 1: So that's called everybody put your emails away. Ten minutes
Speaker 1: of caveats by Josh and Chuck. See that was French
Speaker 1: and you pronounced it great, said Latin. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess if you don't know anything about Champagne, you
Speaker 1: might have noticed that we already said both the word
Speaker 1: champagne and sparkling wine. And um, I think most people
Speaker 1: probably know this, but some people may not. Um, Champagne
Speaker 1: is a region in France, and uh, technically you were
Speaker 1: only supposed to say Champagne for sparkling wine if it
Speaker 1: comes from that region. So all Champagne that's sparkling wine
Speaker 1: is sparkling wine, but all sparkling wine is not Champagne.
Speaker 1: That's right. That that I think that's simplified. Uh. In
Speaker 1: Champagne itself, the region is about hour and a half
Speaker 1: ninety minutes or so northeast of Paris or east. And
Speaker 1: this UM article points out that it's one of the
Speaker 1: least visited regions of France. But I bet I bet
Speaker 1: they have their fair amount of enthusiasts that go, but
Speaker 1: maybe just not as many. I don't know. It's the
Speaker 1: south of France or other Burgundy maybe right, Well, Burgundy
Speaker 1: comes to mind for sure. Apparently Sablie I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that that was a wine growing region, did you, I
Speaker 1: don't think I did, and the very famous mad dog,
Speaker 1: the Nutrian so silly, so um so. Champagne is a region.
Speaker 1: It's also a sparkling wine. But yeah, like you said,
Speaker 1: you can't make sparkling wine outside of this this Champagne region,
Speaker 1: and you can even make spar kling wine inside of
Speaker 1: the Champagne region. And unless you're following a very strictly
Speaker 1: controlled process within this particular region of France, you are
Speaker 1: not allowed anywhere in the world to call your sparkling
Speaker 1: wine Champagne. It's what's what's called an Appalachian applechian. Now
Speaker 1: that's a mountain range. It's what's called a umpan trail
Speaker 1: Appellatian de origine control or ao C is what we're
Speaker 1: gonna call it. But it's basically the same thing with
Speaker 1: um bourbon here in the United States, right where you
Speaker 1: have to follow specific rules and you have to make
Speaker 1: it within a specific region. And the whole point is
Speaker 1: it's you don't want just any schmo making something that's
Speaker 1: similar to your product but not nearly as good, that's
Speaker 1: not going through anywhere near the painstaking amount of process
Speaker 1: um and labor that you're doing, and still call it
Speaker 1: this same thing you're calling it. You don't want to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, so you have to sure restrict it,
Speaker 1: especially the French. You know that they're not gonna be
Speaker 1: all willy nilly about that. That's their region. Yeah, apparently
Speaker 1: there's something like acres, which I don't think is a lot.
Speaker 1: And what are those cities. The two main cities are
Speaker 1: Rim and Epernay. But uh, we even have a thing
Speaker 1: in here that says if you say Rim, then you're
Speaker 1: an American city slicker. If you say m, I've seen
Speaker 1: plenty of wrongs, is what they say in the in
Speaker 1: that help me out article that we got. I think
Speaker 1: you just earned some fans in France with that one. Well,
Speaker 1: by any other name, it is still Champagne. And those
Speaker 1: are the cities. And there are but three grapes that
Speaker 1: you can use to make champagne. You can't just say,
Speaker 1: oh that that muscadine looks nice. They do here in Georgia.
Speaker 1: Just throw it in a bottle in fer minute, Pete,
Speaker 1: put this in your mouth to spit it up. In
Speaker 1: the bottom. There are three grapes and they are the
Speaker 1: peanut and noir grape, the Chardonnay grape, and um, how
Speaker 1: do you pronounce that last one peanut, Okay, which is
Speaker 1: another dark grape or red grape or black grape I
Speaker 1: think is what they call it. Yeah, if you ever
Speaker 1: talked to a real wine person, you don't know the lingo,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be confused quick when they say things like
Speaker 1: black grapes, right, I mean, like, what the heck is
Speaker 1: a black grape? But if you dig into it, you
Speaker 1: start to find that there's a lot of overlapping words.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of multiple terms that describe the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: black grape, red grape, same thing. Yeah, you know, purple grape.
Speaker 1: Why not if you say that, you're gonna get laughed
Speaker 1: out of nava, right, I like the purple grapes. Concorde
Speaker 1: I think is what they're calling But chardon ay is
Speaker 1: um of those three is the only all white grape.
Speaker 1: So um. And you know a lot of people might
Speaker 1: not know this. It's the same with uh still wine.
Speaker 1: But you know inside that black skin is white pulp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: depending on when you pick the grape, So if you
Speaker 1: pick it early, before it has a chance to turn reddish,
Speaker 1: you can conceivably squeeze clear or white grape juice from
Speaker 1: red or black grapes. That's right, and that's what's happening
Speaker 1: in the case of Champagne. Yeah, because if you look
Speaker 1: at it, you're like, well, I mean, this is this
Speaker 1: is clear? How is this made from red grapes? Well,
Speaker 1: as we'll see later on, you have domperiren You wanted
Speaker 1: to think we shoul well, we should go ahead and
Speaker 1: talk about that. I guess well, let's talk about Champagne
Speaker 1: a little bit for first, and then we'll get to
Speaker 1: dom Perignon. So the region itself is pretty ancient UM.
Speaker 1: The first vineyards in Champagne were planted by the Romans,
Speaker 1: who also mine chalk in the area, and there's extensive
Speaker 1: chalk quarries that are underground that have served as Champagne
Speaker 1: sellers for generations. So the place has been making wine.
Speaker 1: The region has been making wine for millennia UM. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until about the sixteen seventeen hundreds when they
Speaker 1: really kind of took what was a naturally occurring problem,
Speaker 1: which was carbonation happening in their wine, and went to
Speaker 1: town with it. They said, if you can't beat them,
Speaker 1: join them. So they took this thing that was viewed
Speaker 1: as a flaw in their wine carbonation sparkling wine, and
Speaker 1: they figured out how to make it even more so
Speaker 1: and made it its own thing. Yeah, and that um
Speaker 1: in that region, that chalk is very key to uh
Speaker 1: what you end up getting because it's very reflective because
Speaker 1: it's white. It is so it reflects the sunlight from
Speaker 1: the ground back up to the leaves. Right. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a very unique region, like and apparently it's uh like,
Speaker 1: if you stumbled upon that region today in our advanced
Speaker 1: wine making techniques and sparkling wine techniques, you probably wouldn't say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a great place to have a vineyard, right
Speaker 1: you go, sacral soil is terrible. Uh, well you might,
Speaker 1: um because it's I think it's a little tougher to
Speaker 1: grow like it. It's a very fine line between getting
Speaker 1: a successful uh harvest in that region, which it makes
Speaker 1: it I think very special. Yeah, it does. Like um
Speaker 1: apparently they have cold, short, wet growing seasons and apparently
Speaker 1: that's where the original um sparkling wine and champagne came from.
Speaker 1: It was a freak of natural um, natural climate and
Speaker 1: natural conditions growing conditions, right because as we'll see a
Speaker 1: second um, fermentation is what creates the carbonation and that
Speaker 1: would happen naturally because they would harvest the wine, make wine,
Speaker 1: store it, and then it would get um cold all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like early before the fermentation process was done,
Speaker 1: so fermentation would basically stop. But then there'll be a
Speaker 1: lot of sugar and yeasts left in their wine that
Speaker 1: hadn't fermented when they started it. So when um spring
Speaker 1: came around again and the things started to warm up,
Speaker 1: a second fermentation process started, and that's really what kicked
Speaker 1: off the bubbles. But for a long time, the people
Speaker 1: in in Um Champagne and the Champagne region, we're tearing
Speaker 1: their hair out because they didn't want this. It was
Speaker 1: a sign that their wine was terrible, poorly made. And
Speaker 1: like I said, it wasn't until Don Perignon came along
Speaker 1: Um who didn't like it himself. Uh, but was one
Speaker 1: of the people who created a lot of the techniques
Speaker 1: that helped established Champagne as the sparkling wine capital of
Speaker 1: the world. So he didn't care for it, No, he didn't,
Speaker 1: he didn't, Um he could. He called it mad wine,
Speaker 1: I think is what he called. Yeah. He was a
Speaker 1: Benedictine monk in the area, and and and he was
Speaker 1: the seller master, which is um. If you are a
Speaker 1: seller master, you are in charge as far as champagne
Speaker 1: goes with basically making the master blend of the champagne, yes,
Speaker 1: the covey and when you put it together the assemblange.
Speaker 1: So Don Perignon was the guy in charge of that
Speaker 1: for this abbey. He was a monk. His name was
Speaker 1: Pierre Parignon. Dom is like it denotes your a monk,
Speaker 1: Benedictine monk and um. He was one of the ones
Speaker 1: who established a lot of the groundwork for creating sparkling
Speaker 1: want creating champagne very interesting like um up to that
Speaker 1: point you would have um sparkling wines in your cellar.
Speaker 1: But they were using like wood and hemp to like
Speaker 1: stop these bottles. Well, that didn't work all that Well,
Speaker 1: bottles were very frequently explode, and sellers were very dangerous
Speaker 1: places to be because one one of these stoppers came out,
Speaker 1: it shoot across the room, hit another bottle, and that
Speaker 1: bottle stop would come out and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you have a chain reaction of these wooden stoppers like
Speaker 1: flying at your head. Yeah, three stooges or something. Right,
Speaker 1: So um, Don Perignon came up with the idea of
Speaker 1: using cork stoppers in thicker English type bottles which could
Speaker 1: withstand the pressure. Um holding him down with little rope muzzles,
Speaker 1: now we use foil and wire. What's that called a muzzle? Yeah, muzzle?
Speaker 1: There's a French word for it, but I can't find
Speaker 1: it my not what's something like that? So he came
Speaker 1: up with a bunch of stuff. He also was the
Speaker 1: first one to start blending wines from the region, and
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about in a few Um, that's the
Speaker 1: basis of champagne. It's a blend champagne. Champagne is a
Speaker 1: blend of wine. That's right. Should we take a break
Speaker 1: like ourselves? Yeah, I'm getting excited. Don't you want some champagne? Really? No?
Speaker 1: I mean if you opened a bottle of champagne in here,
Speaker 1: I would. I would drink a flute because, uh, hey,
Speaker 1: it's rude when you're offered something to turn your nose
Speaker 1: about it unless you're under twenty one and b it
Speaker 1: might help me to relax a little bit about it,
Speaker 1: really would about this thing? You'd feel great? Um, should
Speaker 1: we talk a little bit about uh the champagne method? Yes,
Speaker 1: what the French call method champagne was okay, method champagne.
Speaker 1: So let's see if the closer stuff them. Um. This
Speaker 1: is one reason why champagne is a bit more expensive,
Speaker 1: or can be a bit more expensive. Um. It's because
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of processes involved, and not like
Speaker 1: there's not with still wine, but champagne kind of takes
Speaker 1: it a step further. It's time consuming, and it there
Speaker 1: are people's hands and feet involved a lot of times. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's it is. It starts with
Speaker 1: making wine. Actually it starts even further back then. It
Speaker 1: starts with growing, that's right. Uh. But fermentation, you know,
Speaker 1: all wines are for a minute, of course, and that's
Speaker 1: the Um. That's when sugar breaks down from the grape
Speaker 1: juice turns it into alcohol, delicious delicious alcohol, and that
Speaker 1: is called wine. Um. And just like regular wine, still wine,
Speaker 1: like you said, I guess we should call it regular wine,
Speaker 1: just still wine. Still. Um. They start, they start with
Speaker 1: those grapes. Uh. And in the case of champagne, they
Speaker 1: are pressed with human feet, which still happens. And I
Speaker 1: can't help but think of that video still after all
Speaker 1: these years, that poor lady uh and uh Chateau Lan,
Speaker 1: right was that? And George? Yeah, I don't think I
Speaker 1: knew that it was Georgia, like Morning show Atlanta Morning,
Speaker 1: So I think it was like Fox Live or something
Speaker 1: like that. I just I can still hear it. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in years. But if you don't know
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, there was a one of the
Speaker 1: early viral videos of this uh of this woman on
Speaker 1: location doing a story about wine in Georgia, and she
Speaker 1: was stomping on the wine and UH on a platform
Speaker 1: for some reason, and she fell out of the barrel
Speaker 1: and and hurt herself. But it sounded like she was
Speaker 1: in very much heavy distress, like new dimensions of pain. Yea.
Speaker 1: Or the sounds that the woman made. I've never heard
Speaker 1: anything like it before or since. Um, yeah, I'm very
Speaker 1: sure sure she was Okay. Yeah, that's why I don't
Speaker 1: mind talking about it now. It's not like she was,
Speaker 1: you know, maimed for life or anything like that. I
Speaker 1: was thinking, I love Lucy too. Oh yeah, very famous
Speaker 1: grape stompings. Yeah, you know, or she gets in like
Speaker 1: a grape throwing fight with the lady Lucy. She was
Speaker 1: always getting into trouble. One I was shot in the
Speaker 1: studio where they film that show one time in California,
Speaker 1: right there in Hollywood. Yeah, it's kind of neat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the groups just came over. He was like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the I love Lucy studio. I
Speaker 1: smelled the grapes. Uh, all right, so where were we? Um?
Speaker 1: Feet feet? Yeah? Which is this wonderful old world technique
Speaker 1: that I didn't know this. I didn't know that you
Speaker 1: have to do that for champagne. Is it just because
Speaker 1: it's so delicate? Yeah, I think that's part of it.
Speaker 1: But also they kind of shy away from machinery and
Speaker 1: the method champagne was really yes, a right, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a traditional method. Even though if you look back
Speaker 1: at the history of whine making, champagne is very relatively new,
Speaker 1: Like we're talking sixteen sev hundreds, right, They've been making
Speaker 1: wine for many thousands of years, so this is a
Speaker 1: fairly new invention, but it was still invented at a
Speaker 1: time where you mainly used human labor for for things
Speaker 1: like this. So yeah, they've I've tended to preserve that
Speaker 1: as much as possible. All Right, Well, you've got your juice,
Speaker 1: your white juice, and um, well, they put it in
Speaker 1: stainless steel vats unless you're super old world. I guess,
Speaker 1: uh some people do use wood still, but yeah, that
Speaker 1: you're allowed to use for the for the initial fermentation
Speaker 1: where you're like you're just making the basic wine. You
Speaker 1: can use thing. Yeah, So there it sits for a
Speaker 1: long time, ferments becomes still wine and uh, like we said,
Speaker 1: this is just the first fermentation, and then you move
Speaker 1: on to the blending, which is where that all important
Speaker 1: seller master comes in. Right, So if you're a seller
Speaker 1: master for a champagne house, you are unless you're very
Speaker 1: specific type of champagne house where you actually make champagne
Speaker 1: from growing the grapes to the finished product. Um, you
Speaker 1: were probably going around the Champagne region trying different champagne's,
Speaker 1: are trying different wines still wines, and you're coming up
Speaker 1: within your head a blend of all these different wines.
Speaker 1: And that blend, as we said before, is called the
Speaker 1: couve a. And the couve a is it's just that
Speaker 1: it's a blend of wine and it has mainly three
Speaker 1: different factors involved that you have to take any consideration
Speaker 1: if you're the seller master. Right, if it's a vintage
Speaker 1: couve a vintage blend of wines. Then that means it's
Speaker 1: using grapes that we're all grown in the same year,
Speaker 1: the same growing season. Yeah, and I imagine these seller masters,
Speaker 1: I mean he said they're tasting things. I'm sure they are,
Speaker 1: but I imagine these seller masters in Champagne also kind
Speaker 1: of know exactly where they're gonna go for most of
Speaker 1: these sure, and they also would know like, well, if
Speaker 1: you guys have two thousand seven vintage wine that was
Speaker 1: a great year, or um that year was kind of rough,
Speaker 1: it might take a at a neat edge to it
Speaker 1: some other two thousand nine grapes I'm using too, Right,
Speaker 1: these are what these people are walking around within their heads,
Speaker 1: that kind of that level of information. So they're putting
Speaker 1: it all together. They come up with these clever little blends,
Speaker 1: and each blend to cue a. Again, one of the
Speaker 1: things they can take into account is the vintage the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said that, if it's a vintage wine, it's
Speaker 1: just from the one year growing season. If it's non vintage,
Speaker 1: that means you can you're combining various years, right, And
Speaker 1: typically vintage wines I think tend to be more expensive
Speaker 1: I have. I get the impression that they tend to
Speaker 1: be a little more revered. They definitely take longer to mature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fermentation process is longer than the non vintage. And
Speaker 1: you'll see this on the label. It'll say vintage, else
Speaker 1: it will say envy a lot of times. Um. The
Speaker 1: two other things for a seller master to take into
Speaker 1: account are um, the varietals and the crew. Right yeah,
Speaker 1: c R you So crew is c R E W
Speaker 1: or the c R U E with an umla over
Speaker 1: the rock. Yes. Um, the crew is it's a vineyard basically,
Speaker 1: So you can have grapes all from vineyard from different
Speaker 1: years and different ritals um, and that'd still be what's
Speaker 1: called a single crew. Or you could mix different crews,
Speaker 1: different vineyards grapes um to to create a couve. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the grand crew you might have seen that before
Speaker 1: on a bottle. Um. That's a If you get the
Speaker 1: grand crew status, then you're really cooking with gases. My
Speaker 1: dad used to say, uh. In the mid nineteen eighties, Um, well,
Speaker 1: initially there were only twelve villages that had that grand
Speaker 1: crew status, and then in h they expanded at the
Speaker 1: seventeen UM because five more villages and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to try and pronounce all those were added to the list.
Speaker 1: And um it says here that less than nine percent,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly low. Of all the vineyard land in Champagne
Speaker 1: has grand crew rating, right, So again thou acres only
Speaker 1: nine percent of that is the top rated. Basically, it's
Speaker 1: saying this land is the primo land for growing Champagne grapes.
Speaker 1: So if you get apes that are grown there by
Speaker 1: these people who really know what they're doing, it's you're
Speaker 1: gonna pay through the nose for it. So a grand
Speaker 1: crew um Champagne is going to be pretty expensive, but
Speaker 1: there's a there's a reason behind it. It's not just
Speaker 1: marketing now, and varietals too. Like you said, there's three grapes, right,
Speaker 1: just those three, and depending on how you put them together,
Speaker 1: you can come up with a type of cuve as well. Right,
Speaker 1: So blanc to blanc means white of whites. That's made
Speaker 1: just with Chardonnay grapes. Blanc noir is made with um
Speaker 1: just one of the other black grapes, either the Peanot
Speaker 1: monier or the Pinot noir. That's right, um. But all
Speaker 1: those three things are factored together to create a specific
Speaker 1: cuve A well, and then you've got your rose that
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, your pink wine or is My friend
Speaker 1: Stacy calls it pink crack. It's good stuff. She gets
Speaker 1: ahold of that stuff. Watch out, yeah, um, and that
Speaker 1: is uh well, they there's a couple of ways you
Speaker 1: can do the Um. Sometimes you leave some of the
Speaker 1: skin for a little bit of time, but these days,
Speaker 1: more or less you're gonna be adding a little bit
Speaker 1: of the red wine, um peanut noir red wine to
Speaker 1: the gouvey. So I think there's still wine that's different.
Speaker 1: If you leave the grapes on a little bit, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have pink champagne. If you actually add red wine afterwards,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have rose champagne. What's the difference? Says here,
Speaker 1: Rose is also known as pink champagne. I've seen I know,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm saying. So it gets confusing because
Speaker 1: you definitely get different things from different sources. But I
Speaker 1: have seen in multiple places that when you add red wine,
Speaker 1: that's rose, and that keeping the grapes in his pink
Speaker 1: champagne interesting. But um, apparently there's something like three million
Speaker 1: bottles of red wine or set aside every year just
Speaker 1: to make rose champagne. What a waste, man, I'm really
Speaker 1: I'm changing your mind about champagne. Uh No, you're not
Speaker 1: going to Emily likes rose rose champagne. No, I mean
Speaker 1: she'll have that, but just still rose. There's also rose
Speaker 1: with gas that's not champagne. It's just a little gassie.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of different stuff. Yeah, I love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's not like I discriminate against wines either, but um,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm definitely prefer champagne. Are sparkling wines over still wine,
Speaker 1: like any day of the week. Yeah, yeah, where the
Speaker 1: opposite in more ways than one. Uh are we at
Speaker 1: the Riddler yet? Because this is my favorite part. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we've got the blend and once you once you
Speaker 1: blend it, you have to put it in bottles. And
Speaker 1: one of the things chuck about the AO C this
Speaker 1: uh method champagne wise, is once you put in that bottle,
Speaker 1: it stays in there until the person who buys it
Speaker 1: and drinks it takes it out. You have to keep
Speaker 1: it in the same bottle, all right, Yeah, why would
Speaker 1: you switch bottle? That'd be weird. Anyway. Um, well, you
Speaker 1: you used to want to to cannon to get sentiment out. Um,
Speaker 1: you might just put it in one bottle to reuse
Speaker 1: the bottles. Who knows, but you you. Once you put
Speaker 1: in the bottle, it's got to stay in the bottle.
Speaker 1: And after that initial que is blended, they put it
Speaker 1: in the bottle and they let it sit and depending
Speaker 1: on what kind um, what kind of is. If it's
Speaker 1: non vintage, it's gonna sit there for twelve more months
Speaker 1: for a total of a minimum of fifteen. If it's vintage,
Speaker 1: it's gonna sit there for another three years and just
Speaker 1: age in the bottle. That's right. And so at this
Speaker 1: point you're gonna start you want the bubbles, So you're
Speaker 1: gonna start that second fermentation process by adding sugar and yeast.
Speaker 1: Then you drop the temperature on your cooler, uh to
Speaker 1: about fifty to sixty, which is cooler than the initial
Speaker 1: fermentation process. And um, well you can also do this
Speaker 1: in the tank. Like they're different methods, but right, that's
Speaker 1: the that's called the shar Met method. The tanks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think the old world method is well Jesus,
Speaker 1: you can't use tanks. You gotta use bottles. And don't
Speaker 1: you think old world is the right term. That's old ish.
Speaker 1: I'll just stay old. But I think old world means
Speaker 1: something very specific with wine. Oh yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 1: I think it means non Californian. See, this is where
Speaker 1: we get in trouble. Uh. So this is a very
Speaker 1: slow fermentation process, the second one, and um, the yeast
Speaker 1: is is living and dying and those cells are breaking apart,
Speaker 1: and it's this really interesting processes going on inside that bottle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's eating up all that sugar that you added and
Speaker 1: what's called the liquor to tarage, right, and when you
Speaker 1: add that in and you add the yeast in the yeaster,
Speaker 1: Like this is great. We're gonna live here for generations
Speaker 1: eons by our time table. Yeah, like, look at all
Speaker 1: this delicious sugar that we can eat. And they eat
Speaker 1: it and eat it and they eat all of the
Speaker 1: sugar and this second fermentation process and what we're doing
Speaker 1: or now is recreating those that natural fluke of a
Speaker 1: condition where it would get cold and then warm up
Speaker 1: again and that second fermentation process would start to make
Speaker 1: the CEO. Two same things happening here, but this is
Speaker 1: a very controlled version of that. So the use is
Speaker 1: eating it, and like you said, they're dying and breaking open.
Speaker 1: And so when you're drinking champagne, part of what you're
Speaker 1: drinking are the the internal remnants of yeast cells that
Speaker 1: have spilled their contents into the champagne. That's why I
Speaker 1: don't drink it. But they also leave behind some stuff
Speaker 1: you don't want to drink, which are the cell structures,
Speaker 1: and that creates what's called sentiment. It's basically leftover cellular
Speaker 1: structure of yeast cells, and you want to get that out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's through a process called riddling. And I mentioned
Speaker 1: the riddler is my favorite person in this process. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty thankless job to be the riddler, is it,
Speaker 1: I think? So I'll bet you get a lot of
Speaker 1: free champagne. Well, sure, that's thanks, Yeah, but it's it's
Speaker 1: very solitary and redundant, repetitive. Uh So this riddler. They
Speaker 1: the wine at this point is stored upside down at
Speaker 1: a seventy five degree angle, and that is allowing all
Speaker 1: this all these dead yeat cells to collect down near
Speaker 1: the neck um. They by hand go in every day
Speaker 1: and turn these bottles one eighth the baturn twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: thirty thoddles day. They do this by hand and they're
Speaker 1: just rotating these Uh, it's I can't imagine doing this.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's your life's work. You've got to really
Speaker 1: be dedicated to your craft to be a riddler. And
Speaker 1: it takes about four to six weeks of this this
Speaker 1: um dedicated attention. Very fast process though, if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen a riddler at work, you know, but they have
Speaker 1: to remember that they turn the bottle, so they a
Speaker 1: little chalk mark on each one times in a day. Man,
Speaker 1: it's so they they they're turning the bottle and like
Speaker 1: you said, it's turned up in an angle. And the
Speaker 1: whole point of this is that you're slowly because you
Speaker 1: don't want to disturb the champagne. It's still it's still maturing, right, um.
Speaker 1: But this is towards the end of that maturation phase,
Speaker 1: either that twelve month or that thirty six month minimum.
Speaker 1: And as you're turning it, what you're doing is kind
Speaker 1: of shaking the bottle a little bit too, and you're
Speaker 1: just trying to get the yeast cells what's left of them,
Speaker 1: to move towards the neck, right, And the whole point
Speaker 1: is this is called maturing on the leaves, and the
Speaker 1: leaves I think are what the sediment is called, possibly
Speaker 1: or else what the Yeah, I think that's what it is.
Speaker 1: I think. And as it goes down and accumulates at
Speaker 1: the towards the front of the neck, you now have
Speaker 1: one of the last steps called gourge mont or disgorgement. Yes,
Speaker 1: and what you have is it's just a thing of sediment.
Speaker 1: Is it's accumulated at the neck and you put it
Speaker 1: in an ice bath. It's really amazing how they do this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then what they used to have to do is
Speaker 1: they would pop open a bottle, decant it, filter it,
Speaker 1: and um they would uh pour it back, so it's filtered.
Speaker 1: Because one of the things you'll note about champagne is
Speaker 1: it's very clear and it undergoes several different clarification steps.
Speaker 1: But that would have been one of them. This is
Speaker 1: the same thing, but this one's way cooler. They put
Speaker 1: the neck in an ice bath, a salt ice bath,
Speaker 1: so you know it's really cold because you know, salt
Speaker 1: lowers the freezing point of ice water. Yeah, and at
Speaker 1: this point that's going to create a little yeast plug.
Speaker 1: So up there toward the neck and what they have
Speaker 1: to do then is get that plug out of there
Speaker 1: while maintaining the integrity of the rest of the wine
Speaker 1: that's inside. Yeah, like you're gonna lose some champagne. It's
Speaker 1: been a perfect procedure. Well yeah, I mean that's part
Speaker 1: of the process, is to lose some because then they
Speaker 1: add stuff back in, right, which we'll get to. But um,
Speaker 1: so they remove while it says in here the cork.
Speaker 1: But these days, I think that initial one is a
Speaker 1: cap like a bottle cap, bottle cap, that old world
Speaker 1: bottle cap. And you know, go on YouTube and look
Speaker 1: at a riddler at work and and just check this out.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty neat, Like it's a fast process as well. Um,
Speaker 1: did you see the how it's made on that They
Speaker 1: pop it out and a surprisingly small amount comes out,
Speaker 1: like I thought it would just they'd be like, oh god,
Speaker 1: oh jeez, like it could be the most stressful job
Speaker 1: in the world. But you know, enough comes out. It's
Speaker 1: foaming over but um, it's not like a just a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount, and then they smell it to make sure
Speaker 1: it's not The dude I saw put his thumb over
Speaker 1: it real quick, so like it wasn't foaming over at all.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what I saw, or maybe that's what he
Speaker 1: was doing. I didn't catch it. Yeah, pretty interesting though.
Speaker 1: So the riddlers is doing this by hand, uh, because
Speaker 1: there's you know, carbon dioxide gas in there at this
Speaker 1: point and it forces that plug out and like you said,
Speaker 1: lose just a little bit. Then you add, uh, maybe
Speaker 1: a little brandy, little sugar, a little white wine back
Speaker 1: in to get the you know, the proper amount of
Speaker 1: liquid inside the bottle. Right, that's called the dosage or
Speaker 1: the liquor dosage. Don't call it dosage, no, because I
Speaker 1: did in my head for like half of this research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know, oh that's dosage. Well that's when
Speaker 1: it helps to watch videos. Um. And then they put
Speaker 1: that final cork in place, is one that's going to
Speaker 1: stay in there until you un cork it, and they
Speaker 1: tighten it down with that wire. As are not so
Speaker 1: great article points out, you can make into a little
Speaker 1: chair afterwards. That's what people do, right. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: know you have to have that thing on there because
Speaker 1: it's like there's a lot of pressure still building up
Speaker 1: in that thing, right. Um. And they've actually, thanks to
Speaker 1: a eighteenth century French pharmacist named Antoine Baumy. He came
Speaker 1: up with a device to measure the sugar content and wine.
Speaker 1: So now they know exactly how much sugar to put
Speaker 1: into the champagne to raise the pressure back up. If
Speaker 1: you want about five or six atmospheres of pressure or
Speaker 1: about I think sixty to seventy square or pounds per
Speaker 1: square inch of pressure in a bottle of wine. How
Speaker 1: much fifties seventy I think, or fifty to ninety, but
Speaker 1: it's definitely five or six atmospheres of pressure average, Okay,
Speaker 1: so um, they know how much of that liqueur de
Speaker 1: dosage to put in, how much sugar to put back
Speaker 1: in to raise the the atmosphere back up. And the
Speaker 1: other reason you want to do that to chuck is
Speaker 1: when you're adding that that sugar back in that yeast state,
Speaker 1: all the sugar that was in there, and turn it
Speaker 1: into carbon dioxide that you put in for the second fermentation.
Speaker 1: And when they did, they made this champagne as dry
Speaker 1: as a bone. An extra brute the amount of shure,
Speaker 1: it's actually more than that. It's brute natural well, I
Speaker 1: call it a double X brute. It's crazy dry. I've
Speaker 1: never had it, but I can only imagine how Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's one where they don't put in any dossage.
Speaker 1: They don't add any sugar afterwards, so it's bone dry
Speaker 1: and that's just for people who really prefer that, because
Speaker 1: that's Yes, apparently the extra brute is the least popular. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can imagine, And I think I think the best
Speaker 1: selling is sort of that brute, which is sort of
Speaker 1: in the middle of dry and sweet or sec or
Speaker 1: demi sec, and then I think the last one is
Speaker 1: due d o u x is the sweetest of all
Speaker 1: non brute. Yeah, but brute is drier than extra dry,
Speaker 1: which is kind of surprising. But if you ever, it's
Speaker 1: pretty easy to pick up. If you just read it
Speaker 1: once or twice, you're like, okay, that's that's how it's denoted.
Speaker 1: But all that is based on how much dosage you
Speaker 1: put in after you just just uh and gore disgorge
Speaker 1: the yeast plug gorge. Uh one of my least favorite words.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's a bad one. Um. Is this
Speaker 1: true about Madame Clique from what I saw? Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: she was an entrepreneur famously. In fact, she's called Widow
Speaker 1: cliquoh at times she's widowed at a very young age, sadly,
Speaker 1: and took over her husband's wine business and supposedly invented
Speaker 1: that disgorging process herself, which is uh. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: kind of simple when you look at it, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have thought to do it. No again, I mean
Speaker 1: they were decanning them back then, filtering it out. So
Speaker 1: and this was I think eighteen thirteen when the widow
Speaker 1: clicko came up with it. And about then is when
Speaker 1: Champagne the drink took off, at least in France and
Speaker 1: started to spread very quickly around the world. Yeah, Napoleon
Speaker 1: had a lot to do with that, right, I think
Speaker 1: Napoleon did. By World War One, Winston Churchill reminded everyone,
Speaker 1: we're not five need to save just France, boys, We're
Speaker 1: fighting to save Champagne. Um, should we take another break?
Speaker 1: I think, all right, we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what the fuss is with this stuff after this?
Speaker 1: All right, So Josh the master winemaker, the seller master
Speaker 1: has uh walked through the process. What a great job
Speaker 1: that would be. Yeah, I have a you know, my
Speaker 1: friend Robbie is a kind of a rock star winemaker
Speaker 1: and nappa. Yeah, it's pretty be great. He's he's like
Speaker 1: he's living a good life. In fact, he got in
Speaker 1: touch at one point because he wanted to start a
Speaker 1: wine podcast. Uh. And we just sort of email back
Speaker 1: and forth, and it just never like he just wanted
Speaker 1: advice and stuff, not like he wanted to start one
Speaker 1: with me, because that would be, Um, what are those
Speaker 1: podcasts called when like someone's super expert and then you
Speaker 1: got a big dummy. Uh uh I can't think of
Speaker 1: any That's what that would have been. Man, there was
Speaker 1: like that was just ripe for jokes. I would have
Speaker 1: been the Thomas Satan Church to his Uh, Paul, oh
Speaker 1: you're talking about sideways. I thought you were talking about
Speaker 1: wings for a second. I would have been like, when
Speaker 1: are we gonna drink? It? Tastes good to me, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Robbie'd be spitting it out. Um. I don't think
Speaker 1: you should that. He's very talented and you know does
Speaker 1: quite well like making wine for other people. And he
Speaker 1: also has his own label uh Lingevan and Pierce and
Speaker 1: Meyer Wines plug plug uh. And when he got to
Speaker 1: his house and stay with him in his awesome guest house,
Speaker 1: the top of how Mountain. Huh, you get drunk on
Speaker 1: like amazing expensive wine. So it's awesome that he opens
Speaker 1: like you're drinking that Peria. I'm sorry, this is Pellegrina.
Speaker 1: Oh excuse me, that's the Italian version of Peria. It is.
Speaker 1: It's like the like spumrsecco. What's spumanti? Spumante is Italian?
Speaker 1: Is its sparkling? Right? Yeah? I guess Prosecco's Italian as well.
Speaker 1: I just remember that from when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: Martini and ROSSIASI it's amazing, and that's drilled in my
Speaker 1: brain Martini and Rossie, which probably is like crap sparkling wine,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I don't know that it's good. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's I think that's probably what
Speaker 1: gave you your headache, that and all the low and rawl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that still around? I don't know. And though Bob
Speaker 1: and Doug drank from now, they drank some sort of
Speaker 1: was it made up? No? They drank Molson? Well is
Speaker 1: it with bats? I mean it was probably some Canadian beer.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get killed over this, are sorry? Everybody? All right?
Speaker 1: So let's move on then to what makes champagne so
Speaker 1: so expensive and so fancy, like it has this um,
Speaker 1: there's this notion you know that you drink it for
Speaker 1: celebrations or that you're like sort of the upper crust
Speaker 1: of society if you're drinking champagne. Well, supposedly there is
Speaker 1: an actual reason why champagne is associated with toasting the
Speaker 1: big events in life. Because for a thousand years, from
Speaker 1: about the ninth century to the nineteenth century, they had
Speaker 1: no champagne. The kings of France were coronated in champagne,
Speaker 1: so it was like a celebration town for the whole country.
Speaker 1: So toasting with even before they were sparkling wines, um,
Speaker 1: toasting with champagne wine was traditional. So have you ever
Speaker 1: been in a restaurant and like gotten good news and said, waiter,
Speaker 1: champagne song. Has anyone ever done that? Uh? Besides in movies,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe it's funny like I was watching, Uh,
Speaker 1: I was watching McConaughey act and it was I was
Speaker 1: watching a movie on somebody else's seat back on a flight,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't hearing it, so I was really just
Speaker 1: watching the movie, right, And um, I was like, I
Speaker 1: imagine if you were in real life around Matthew McConaughey,
Speaker 1: like in a room with one of his characters, and
Speaker 1: just how off putting in bizarre that experience would be,
Speaker 1: you know, because he's just said he just choose the
Speaker 1: scenery and everything he does. It's just so big. He's
Speaker 1: that in real life, if you were interacting with that character,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, calm down, man, you're freaking me out. Well,
Speaker 1: Watterson was pretty chill. Yeah, yeah, okay, but everybody since
Speaker 1: Waterson pretty much all right, boy, that's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to think on a plane. Just hit me, hit me
Speaker 1: on the plane. I think if I was in a
Speaker 1: restaurant and something great happened, I would say, waiter another
Speaker 1: Gin and tonic and they would go huh. They probably
Speaker 1: say you got it. Actually, I started calling those lime
Speaker 1: salads at my house. Nice. You're on the gin and
Speaker 1: tonic now, yeah. That usually happens around around April. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: April two, you know, September. I going for you. Um
Speaker 1: gin and bitter lemon is a nice combo. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And I thought bitter lemon was just like a fever
Speaker 1: tree drink that they make them. They make a good one,
Speaker 1: but everybody from like Canada dry to whoever else makes
Speaker 1: better lemon as well. So just give yourself a good
Speaker 1: bitter lemon and some ginn of it. Um, we should
Speaker 1: do it. We'll definitely do a podcast on gin at
Speaker 1: some point. Very interesting. Uh, Liquor Complex, can be sure.
Speaker 1: I got another one for you with that better lemon.
Speaker 1: If you want to get really fancy, get some St.
Speaker 1: George terror ter War. Yeah, I'm not a fan. You
Speaker 1: had the dry Rye? No you did? You? You tried
Speaker 1: the tar war one? Yeah, some one that tastes like feet, No,
Speaker 1: that's the dry rye. I've tried all three of those St.
Speaker 1: George's and I don't like any of them. I'm a
Speaker 1: London dry guy. Well, anyway, you'll still like it with
Speaker 1: bitter lemon, all right, everyone else you would like the
Speaker 1: Tara War St. George with bitter lemon, everyone else on
Speaker 1: the planet. Because all right, and I figured out what
Speaker 1: was up with the dry rye. You're absolutely right. You
Speaker 1: can't make a martini out of that stuff and kill you.
Speaker 1: It's not made for it. It's made for things like
Speaker 1: the Gronies. It makes a killer NEGRONI. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a I stick to my lime salad. You know. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know me and my basic names. But try the
Speaker 1: bitter lemon sometime with gin. Okay, your your dry line,
Speaker 1: it's fine, all right, Okay, but with with the bitter
Speaker 1: limbon instead of tonic. Okay, I'll give it a dry
Speaker 1: And if I don't like it, then I'm just weird
Speaker 1: because everyone else in the world loves it. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that. You said that. Uh, all right, we're in
Speaker 1: the world worry. So we were talking about, um, what
Speaker 1: makes champagne so fancy? Yeah? Uh, well, like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: it's um. You know, it's a very small region comparatively speaking. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that will lend to the price. And all these
Speaker 1: hand processes that they still might use or foot processes
Speaker 1: it's a big one is gonna make it more expensive.
Speaker 1: And anytime the price is being driven up, uh, it's
Speaker 1: gonna have that sort of air of sophistication. Uh. And then,
Speaker 1: of course when the hip hop scene started kind of
Speaker 1: uh using that in lyrics and popping Champagne on the
Speaker 1: yacht and the videos I'm on a boat. What was that?
Speaker 1: Was the stur life short? Okay with oh I think
Speaker 1: I remember that, I don't remember who it was, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it was got. It was one of
Speaker 1: those Andy Sandberg shorts. Not Little Wayne. Who's the other
Speaker 1: little little bow Wow? No, he's just bow Wow now
Speaker 1: really yeah, grows up man, the guy who was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy. I have no idea you do, Little John?
Speaker 1: Yes John? Yeah, uh yeah, I'm not. But yes, it
Speaker 1: was an Andy Sandberg short. Yeah I do. I think
Speaker 1: I do remember that. But that definitely, um kind of
Speaker 1: solidified the sort of you know status. Yeah, sure, that's
Speaker 1: exactly the word I would I would suggested, but it
Speaker 1: definitely didn't hurt. No, especially in the States here and
Speaker 1: with a whole new generation of people, right, like the
Speaker 1: younger generation. It's like champagne, right, but then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Little John's like, I got some champagne for real.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the champagne industry was like, seriously, keep doing it. Sure.
Speaker 1: So the thing though, is there's um actual reason behind
Speaker 1: champagne being more expensive than your typical wine. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that all champagne or all all sparkling wines
Speaker 1: are like out of your price range. No, I mean
Speaker 1: you can get some cheap sparkling wine that'll goodche No, No,
Speaker 1: that's not true. Like you can get Chandon wines fors
Speaker 1: and it's not going to give you a headache. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the six dollar good stuff. Yeah, but twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're gonna spring for a decent bottle
Speaker 1: of wine if it's New Year's Eve, why not, That's
Speaker 1: what I'll toast it. Uh. Alright, So twenty bucks will
Speaker 1: get you a good bottle of decent champagne, is what
Speaker 1: you're saying, Yes, not bad. Or you can spend hundreds
Speaker 1: of dollars, thousands, tens of thousands at auction, just like wine,
Speaker 1: if you want some super rare collectible wine apparently a
Speaker 1: quarter of a million dollars for a bottle at the
Speaker 1: Moscow Ritz Carlton, And that's not even something you drink,
Speaker 1: right if you're a jackass. Sure, but I mean, if
Speaker 1: your you have to be a jackass to spend a
Speaker 1: quarter of a million dollars on a bottle of champagne anyway,
Speaker 1: you better drink it, frankly. But champagne you don't keep right,
Speaker 1: you can, you can, and so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: misunderstanding about it. Right, So a lot of people think
Speaker 1: that you keep champagne standing up, you do for about
Speaker 1: the first month. But if you're keeping in a seller,
Speaker 1: you want to keep it on its side. Like any
Speaker 1: bottle of wine, you want the the wine touching the cork.
Speaker 1: But the reason that champagne actually ages in the bottle.
Speaker 1: It's just like wine that that cork. It's in there
Speaker 1: pretty good, but it's not air tight. There's a minimal
Speaker 1: amount of gas exchange going on, so that the wine,
Speaker 1: the champagne, continues to mature over the course of ten
Speaker 1: twenty thirty years if you keep it. If you keep it,
Speaker 1: the key to champagne, apparently storing it is you want
Speaker 1: to avoid temperature fluctuations. You want to keep it at
Speaker 1: about the same temperature for the whole time you have
Speaker 1: its story. To bury it in your backyards, its side
Speaker 1: deep and leave it there. Yeah uh, and it will.
Speaker 1: You will find that all the worms drank it. You'll
Speaker 1: be like worms. Bury it under the frost line, and
Speaker 1: you want to keep it out of the sunlight too
Speaker 1: well underground. But apparently as the ages, I've never had
Speaker 1: old champagne, but as the ages, its taste starts to
Speaker 1: mellow um and it takes on dried fruit nutty, toasty
Speaker 1: honey notes are like the main notes that it hits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a bottle of dom peregnon that awful when
Speaker 1: we opened it, but we didn't. It was every improper
Speaker 1: thing you could do, we did, including moving it in
Speaker 1: a hot truck f l A to Atlanta, a hot
Speaker 1: moving truck. I don't know. I mean, we just don't
Speaker 1: drink it much, so we just had it and we
Speaker 1: got it as a gift. If that happens, you just
Speaker 1: just put some fresh squeeze orange juice in there. It's fine, boom,
Speaker 1: then you've got a mimosa. I'll have a mimosa occasionally.
Speaker 1: That's champagne, I know, in orange juice. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: key with the orange juice. Well, I mean I enjoy
Speaker 1: mimosa more than just regular champagne. It's like a whole.
Speaker 1: It's definitely one of those things that's greater than the
Speaker 1: sum of its parts. Yeah, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: I ever said chuck the um the Those two quarter
Speaker 1: of a million dollar bottles of champagne were from a
Speaker 1: shipwreck that was headed to Russia to bring champagne to
Speaker 1: the Tsar's family, and it's all the shipwrecked and they
Speaker 1: discovered it in the nineties and now they're selling it
Speaker 1: at the Ritz Carlton two. What did you say? And
Speaker 1: I think that's the one that's like a collector's piece, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know you like to put it on your wall.
Speaker 1: That's not from what I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: what you do with that besides just drink it and
Speaker 1: hope for the best. Well, should we talk about drinking
Speaker 1: it in the proper way, to open it and to
Speaker 1: pour it, please consume it, because uh, if you if
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing and you've seen too
Speaker 1: many movies, you might try and pop that cork out
Speaker 1: across the room. It's very dangerous. It is very dangerous,
Speaker 1: and people get injured, right are their deaths? I think
Speaker 1: I didn't see it, or is that like an urban legend?
Speaker 1: I would guess an open legend. I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking if you died from me getting hit with
Speaker 1: a cork, you had a pre existing condition. Is that
Speaker 1: covered I don't know under Obamacare ster I guess we'll see.
Speaker 1: So you'll get about six flutes if you're pouring properly
Speaker 1: out of a all of champagne. I want to serve
Speaker 1: it between forty and forty five degrees celsias your fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: That's fahrenheit right, I don't know. Uh. If you are
Speaker 1: caught with your pants down at a party, just go
Speaker 1: champagne and it'll get you out of it. Um. And
Speaker 1: you want to chill it very quickly, you can put
Speaker 1: it in an ice bath and not to get out
Speaker 1: that yeast plug, but just to make it cold fast,
Speaker 1: just like it would beer or something. All right, the
Speaker 1: neck you mean, no, no, no, the whole bottle. If
Speaker 1: you want to serve it. You got a hot bottle
Speaker 1: of champagne and your moving truck, throw it in an
Speaker 1: ice bath for about twenty minutes and you should be
Speaker 1: good to go. Yeah, if you there's a party trick
Speaker 1: you can do too, where if you put just the
Speaker 1: neck in the ice bath, you can use what's called
Speaker 1: a saber. You can actually use anything. I've seen somebody
Speaker 1: do it on on video with a shoe. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: don't even have to freeze it if you're a good
Speaker 1: saber or yeah, but you you kind of want to.
Speaker 1: You want the neck very very cold because you want
Speaker 1: the glass to just crack off cleanly. Yeah, and what
Speaker 1: the deal is if you've ever seen someone, it's called sabridge. Um.
Speaker 1: We mentioned earlier that the champagne bottle is very thick
Speaker 1: because it's uh in there at about nine p s.
Speaker 1: I where the scene meets the lip, it's about less
Speaker 1: glass and so that's a vulnerable area and that's what
Speaker 1: makes sabering possible. And so you use well, like you said,
Speaker 1: you could use a shoe. I guess if you're you know,
Speaker 1: if you're that guy. But there's traditional sabers there there.
Speaker 1: They look like a little sword. They are a little sword.
Speaker 1: They just aren't ground to a point or an edge.
Speaker 1: They're very blunt. Well because the point is using blunt
Speaker 1: force on a weak point of the of the neck
Speaker 1: of the bottle. Yeah, but you can use your like
Speaker 1: a saber can be sharp. You just use the other
Speaker 1: side of it. And um, I mean it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: neat to do because you're not like I think for
Speaker 1: a while I thought you were just knocking the cork out,
Speaker 1: so I thought, as well, but you're you're you're knocking
Speaker 1: the glass off. Yeah, the top the top lip of
Speaker 1: the of the bottle is coming clean off. If you're
Speaker 1: doing it correctly, and it's it's that is also dangerous
Speaker 1: if you don't know what you're doing, because that thing
Speaker 1: will fly or more. Yeah, and that's actual glass. What
Speaker 1: you want to do is have a sharpshooter handy to
Speaker 1: shoot it out of the sky before it hurts anybody,
Speaker 1: that's right, and have everyone standing behind you. That's the
Speaker 1: traditional way. Um, how you really open it is and
Speaker 1: this is a uh even if you're not just popping
Speaker 1: the cork, you might like twist the cork off. You
Speaker 1: want to twist the bottle. That's sort of the number
Speaker 1: one rule to open it cleanly and non dangerously and
Speaker 1: without why champagne, you know, getting all over the place,
Speaker 1: like when you open an a tonic bottle, her soda,
Speaker 1: anything fizzy. That's one of our traditions backstage. A stuff
Speaker 1: you should know shows is Josh opens a tonic ball,
Speaker 1: get it all excuse everywhere, and you go, what's the deal?
Speaker 1: Every single time? Um, I think because I have so
Speaker 1: many lime salads and just I know you gotta go
Speaker 1: easy with those tonic bottles. I do, and it's still
Speaker 1: spray me. It's it's almost comical as um No, it's
Speaker 1: pretty funny um. So you're twisting the bottle. Uh if
Speaker 1: if you have a towel, you can hold it over
Speaker 1: the cork, but you really don't need it as long
Speaker 1: as you're kind of holding it with your hand and
Speaker 1: twist that bottle. Put your thumb in the punt as
Speaker 1: they call it, which is that the area at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the bottle to div it. Yeah, the punt
Speaker 1: the concave part. Yeah, the punt. Let's put your thumb
Speaker 1: in the punt um and then you've got it open
Speaker 1: and you tilt the glass importance a little bit for
Speaker 1: a little bit more. You want about three quarters of
Speaker 1: a flute and put your pinkie up and go to town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I did a brain stuff on what the best
Speaker 1: kind of glass for champagne is, and apparently the tulip
Speaker 1: is it's a combination between the coupe and the flute um.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen it before, No I didn't. It's a
Speaker 1: you know, the tulip class um. But apparently they allow
Speaker 1: for the most sparkle and if you if you have
Speaker 1: the so the bubbles coming up the French call effervescence.
Speaker 1: And if you look at a glass of champagne, that
Speaker 1: you're just holding there in front of you. When they
Speaker 1: bubble up to the top, they accumulate into a foam,
Speaker 1: and uh, that is called moose like shock a lot moose,
Speaker 1: remember top secret. Oh yeah, but it's not that. It's
Speaker 1: just moose is what they call it. Or foam is
Speaker 1: another way to put it. That's what they call it.
Speaker 1: And so actually when you're creating them second fermentation process
Speaker 1: of the champagne making, what the method champagne was, it's
Speaker 1: called um the prize de mouse or the foam creation
Speaker 1: wow a lot. And that's why you poured slow too,
Speaker 1: because if you get too fast, it's gonna get everywhere
Speaker 1: like your tonic. And then you pour it three quarters
Speaker 1: full and you toast and say huzzah, huzzah, huzza. I
Speaker 1: think is the traditional yeah thing you're supposed to say.
Speaker 1: So you like champagne yet, No, it's just not for me.
Speaker 1: That's fine, dope, feel bad for me. I want then, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about champagne, go get some.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, you can type that word in
Speaker 1: the search part how stuff works dot com. And since
Speaker 1: I said search par it's time for a listener mail,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna call this one. Uh. Well, getting
Speaker 1: the nomenclature correct something we always strive to do and
Speaker 1: don't always do. Hey, guys, let me start by saying,
Speaker 1: you've been listening your show for two years. You've added
Speaker 1: so much joy, laughter, and knowledge to my life. Now.
Speaker 1: You're always intentional and sensitive about the language you used
Speaker 1: on your show, And while listening to the MS episode,
Speaker 1: I noticed something I've heard you two say in the past.
Speaker 1: I work in suicide prevention and hope to change the
Speaker 1: culture and reduce the stigma around suicide. As you know,
Speaker 1: one of the first steps of doing that is examining
Speaker 1: the language we use. The phrase commit suicide. It's very common,
Speaker 1: of course, and has been used for a very long time. However,
Speaker 1: the word commit makes it sound criminal. This perpetuates a
Speaker 1: stigma that there's something bad or wrong with someone who's
Speaker 1: experiencing thoughts of suicide, making it less likely that they
Speaker 1: will reach out and ask for help. I want to
Speaker 1: encourage you, guys to use the word died by suicide
Speaker 1: or completed suicide as an alternative and more factual term. Uh.
Speaker 1: The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention it's great resource for
Speaker 1: more information and of course I need to plug my
Speaker 1: own nonprofit I work for not my kid dot org.
Speaker 1: I appreciate everything you guys do. Please come to Phoenix.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you will sell out a show there. Sincerely,
Speaker 1: that as Sarah tisden a k A Hope dealer. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: dealing hope. That's the heck of a Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know what, I never thought about that, but that is
Speaker 1: not true. That's not true. You have because we've been
Speaker 1: called out on this before. Really, yes, but I think
Speaker 1: we've e been done a listener mail on it before.
Speaker 1: But it's so ingrained to say commit and then complete.
Speaker 1: It just sounds like they finished their homework or something
Speaker 1: like that, but died by suicide. I could. I can
Speaker 1: get behind that, and I will try, but it's just
Speaker 1: so hard not say committed. What though, if you're saying
Speaker 1: if it hasn't happened, you're saying someone was going to
Speaker 1: attempt to thinking attempting suicide. Okay, yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: one's a kacher. All right, man, I didn't know we've
Speaker 1: covered this, so I feel bad that I still haven't
Speaker 1: gotten over that. Then yeah, same here, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna work on it. Yeah, same here. Thanks, for calling
Speaker 1: us out. Hope Dealer appreciate that. Thanks Sarah, keep dealing that, Hope,
Speaker 1: open up your trench, come and be like, this is
Speaker 1: what I got right? Uh. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us to correct us, prod us whatever,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us that that's a sk podcast.
Speaker 1: You can hang out with me on Twitter at josh
Speaker 1: um Clark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Charles d W Chuck Bryant or slash Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us both an email and
Speaker 1: Jerry to stuff podcasts at how stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: and has always hang out with us at our home
Speaker 1: on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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