Speaker 1: M Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's select,
Speaker 1: I've chosen our two thousand seventeen episode, How Champagne Works.
Speaker 1: It's a charming little episode that fair warning will almost
Speaker 1: certainly make you want a glass of champagne, unless you're Chuck,
Speaker 1: though I suspect he secretly did too. Enjoy Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, Pierre Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles Jacques Ryant. Jerry. Oh nice rolling. Are we allowed
Speaker 1: to tell everyone your last name? Jerry? We've done it before. Okay,
Speaker 1: what if they go try to find on Facebook and
Speaker 1: find out she doesn't actually exist? It's all just a plant,
Speaker 1: fake Facebook page that we've created. I know that she
Speaker 1: she is an actual plant, right that crows in the
Speaker 1: corner feed me. I am worried about this one. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go ahead and say it. Oh, why you
Speaker 1: were worried about the wine one, for the same reasons
Speaker 1: we didn't do the wine one. I know. That's why.
Speaker 1: That's exactly why, exactly for those reasons. No one knows
Speaker 1: anything about champagne. People spend lifetimes learning the stuff. Yes,
Speaker 1: but we have a show, and everyone knows that we
Speaker 1: don't spend a lifetime learning about all we talk about that.
Speaker 1: We just do our research and we try to find
Speaker 1: the 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. It's French, so champagne, right, Champagne. I
Speaker 1: think that's how bugs Bunny always pronounced it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you're you're following a grand tradition. I didn't know he
Speaker 1: was a drinker. Well we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: champagne's a little late. Now. Do you like champagne? I
Speaker 1: love champagne? Okay, I love it. I don't I mainly
Speaker 1: drink sparkling wine and I don't really drink champagne itself.
Speaker 1: But buddy, this article made me want to drink some champagne. Well,
Speaker 1: you do a little proseccolla. 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 it save love
Speaker 1: 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. No, champagne is no know,
Speaker 1: I mean silly and bubbly. It's fun like I played
Speaker 1: hop scotch and stuff like that. Yeah, I know, that's terrible.
Speaker 1: Why would you ever want to do that again. I
Speaker 1: don't mean I felt like a girl because I was
Speaker 1: drinking champagne. That's what I thought. You meant, like, 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 at with
Speaker 1: 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 shand
Speaker 1: on twice. Okay, when on Shandon cruise once, big fans
Speaker 1: of Shandon. Where is that? Hint? Hint, It's out in
Speaker 1: um Napa Napa Valley. It's famously attached to Mowett and Shandon.
Speaker 1: And then Shandon went and said, hey, we're gonna open
Speaker 1: up something in California too. You just like cool because
Speaker 1: their tear war is it's got a good tar 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? Is that 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 to
Speaker 1: but maybe just not as many. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: the south of France or other Burgundy maybe right, well,
Speaker 1: Burgundy comes to mind for sure. Apparently Sablie, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that that was a wine growing region, did you.
Speaker 1: I don't think I did. And the very famous mad
Speaker 1: dog 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 you can't make sparkling wine outside of this this
Speaker 1: Champagne region. And you can even make sparkling wine inside
Speaker 1: of the Champagne region. And unless you're following a very
Speaker 1: strictly controlled process within this particular region of France, you
Speaker 1: are not allowed anywhere in the world to call your
Speaker 1: sparkling wine Champagne. It's what's what's called an Appalachian applechian.
Speaker 1: Now that's a mountain range. It's what's called a um
Speaker 1: Appalachian trail Appellatian de origine control or AOC is what
Speaker 1: we're gonna call it. But it's basically the same thing
Speaker 1: with um Bourbon here in the United States eights right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where you have to follow specific rules, and you have
Speaker 1: to make it within a specific region. And the whole
Speaker 1: point is it's you don't want just any schmo making
Speaker 1: something that's similar to your product but not nearly as good,
Speaker 1: that's not going through anywhere near the painstaking amount of
Speaker 1: process um and labor that you're doing and still call
Speaker 1: it the same thing you're calling it. You don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, now you have to restrict it,
Speaker 1: especially the French. You know that they're not going to
Speaker 1: be all willy nilly about that. That's their region. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently there's something like food acres, which I don't think
Speaker 1: is a lot. And what are those cities? The two
Speaker 1: main cities are rem and Epernay. But uh, we even
Speaker 1: have a thing in here that says if you say M,
Speaker 1: then you're an American city slicker. If you say realms M.
Speaker 1: I've seen plenty wrong, is what they say in the
Speaker 1: in that help me out article that we got. I
Speaker 1: think you just are in some fans in France with
Speaker 1: that one. Well, by any other name, it is still Champagne.
Speaker 1: And those are the cities, and there are but three
Speaker 1: grapes that you can use to make champagne. You can't
Speaker 1: just say oh, that that muscadine looks nice. They do
Speaker 1: here in Georgia. Let's throw it in a bottle in
Speaker 1: fer minute. Uh, pete, put this in your mouth to
Speaker 1: spit it up in the bottle. There are three grapes
Speaker 1: and they are the pinot noir grape, the Chardonnay grape,
Speaker 1: and um, how do you pronounce that last one? Peanut
Speaker 1: mon okay, which is another dark grape or red grape
Speaker 1: or black grape I think is what they call it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you ever talked to a real wine person, you
Speaker 1: don't know the lingo, you're gonna be confused quick when
Speaker 1: they say things like black grapes, right, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: what the heck is a black grape? But if you
Speaker 1: dig into it, you start to find that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of overlapping words. There's a lot of multiple terms
Speaker 1: that describe the same thing. Yeah, black grape, red grape,
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah, you know, purple grape. Well not if
Speaker 1: you say that, you're gonna get laughed out of nava, Right,
Speaker 1: I like the purple grapes concorde, I think is what
Speaker 1: they're calling. But chardon Ay is um of those three
Speaker 1: is the only all white grape. So um. And you
Speaker 1: know a lot of people might not know this. It's
Speaker 1: the same with uh still wine. But you know inside
Speaker 1: that black skin is white pulp. Yeah, depending on when
Speaker 1: you pick the grape. So if you pick it early,
Speaker 1: before it has a chance to turn reddish, you can
Speaker 1: conceivably squeeze clear or white grape juice from red or
Speaker 1: black grapes. That's right, And that's what's happening in the
Speaker 1: case of Champagne. Yeah, because if you look at it,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I mean, this is this is clear?
Speaker 1: How is this made from red grapes? Well, as we'll
Speaker 1: see later on, you have dompering. You want to think
Speaker 1: I should well, we should go ahead and talk about that.
Speaker 1: I guess. Well, let's talk about Champagne a little bit
Speaker 1: for first, and then we'll get to Domparing. So the
Speaker 1: region itself is pretty ancient. Um. The first vineyards in
Speaker 1: Champagne were planted by the Romans, who also mine chalk
Speaker 1: in the area, and there's extensive chalk quarries that are
Speaker 1: underground that have served as Champagne sellers for generations. So
Speaker 1: the place has been making wine. The region has been
Speaker 1: making wine for millennia. UM. But it wasn't until about
Speaker 1: the sixteen seventeen hundreds when they really kind of took
Speaker 1: what was a naturally occurring problem, which was carbonation happening
Speaker 1: in their wine, and went to town with it. They said,
Speaker 1: if you can't beat them, join them. So they took
Speaker 1: this thing that was viewed as a flaw in their wine,
Speaker 1: carbonation sparkling wine, and they figured out how to make
Speaker 1: it even more so and made it its own thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that um in that region, that chalk is very
Speaker 1: key to uh what you end up getting because it's
Speaker 1: very reflective because it's white. It is so it reflects
Speaker 1: the sun light from the ground back up to the leaves. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's 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, Sacra blue. This soil is terrible. Uh, well
Speaker 1: you might um because it's I think it's a little
Speaker 1: tougher to grow like it. It's a very fine line
Speaker 1: between getting a successful uh harvest in that region, which
Speaker 1: makes 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'd 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 things started to warm up, a
Speaker 1: second fermentation process started, and that's really what kicked off
Speaker 1: the bubbles. But for a long time the people in
Speaker 1: in Um Champagne and the Champagne region were tearing their
Speaker 1: hair out because they didn't want this. It was a
Speaker 1: sign that their wine was terrible, poorly made. And like
Speaker 1: I said, it wasn't until Don Perann Young 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 um established Champagne as the sparkling wine capital
Speaker 1: of the world. So he didn't care for it, No,
Speaker 1: he didn't. He didn't, Um he could. He called it
Speaker 1: mad wine, I think, is what he calls. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: was a Benedictine monk in the area. And and and
Speaker 1: he was the seller master, which is um. If you
Speaker 1: are a seller master, you are in charge as far
Speaker 1: as Champagne goes with basically making the master blend of
Speaker 1: the Champagne are talking, yes, the cove and when you
Speaker 1: put it together, that's the assemblange, right, So Don Perignon
Speaker 1: was the guy in charge of that for this abbey.
Speaker 1: He was a monk. His name was Pierre Parignon. Dom
Speaker 1: is like you knowes you're a monk, Benedictine monk. And
Speaker 1: he was one of the ones who established a lot
Speaker 1: of the groundwork for creating sparkling wine, creating Champagne very
Speaker 1: interesting like um up to that point you would have
Speaker 1: um sparkling wines in your cellar. But they were using
Speaker 1: like wood and hemp to like stop these bottles. Well,
Speaker 1: that didn't work all that well. Bottles were very frequently
Speaker 1: explode and sells were very dangerous places to be because
Speaker 1: one one of these stoppers came out, it shoot across
Speaker 1: the room, hit another bottle, and that bottle stopped would
Speaker 1: come out, and all of a sudden you have a
Speaker 1: chain reaction of these wooden stoppers like flying at your head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: three stooges or something. Right, So, um, dom Perignon came
Speaker 1: up with the idea of using cork stoppers in thicker
Speaker 1: English type bottles that could withstand the pressure, um holding
Speaker 1: them down with little rope muzzles. Now we use foil
Speaker 1: and wire. What's that called a muzzle? Yeah, a muzzle.
Speaker 1: There's a French word for it, but I can't find
Speaker 1: it my note, something like that. So he came up
Speaker 1: with a bunch of stuff. He also was the first
Speaker 1: one to start blending wines from the region, and as
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in a few Um, that's the basis
Speaker 1: of champagne. It's a blend champagne. Champagne is a blend
Speaker 1: of wine. That's right. Should we take a break ourselves? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm getting excited. Don't you want some champagne? Sorry? Really no,
Speaker 1: I mean if you opened a bottle of champagne in here,
Speaker 1: I would I would drink a flute. Yeah, 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 be it
Speaker 1: might help me to relax a little bit. Yeah, 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 to say, if the closures set 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 is 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.
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's it is. It starts with
Speaker 1: making wine. Actually it starts even further back to that.
Speaker 1: It starts with growing great, that's right. Uh. But fermentation
Speaker 1: you know all wines are for a minute of course,
Speaker 1: and that's the um. That's when sugar breaks down from
Speaker 1: the grape juice turns it into alcohol, delicious delicious alcohol,
Speaker 1: and that is called wine. Um. And just like regular
Speaker 1: wine still wine. Like you said, I guess we shouldn't
Speaker 1: call it regular wine, just still wine. Um. They start basic,
Speaker 1: they start with those grapes. Uh. And in the case
Speaker 1: of Champagne, they are pressed with human feet, which still happens.
Speaker 1: And I can't help but think of that video still
Speaker 1: after all these years, that poor lady h and uh
Speaker 1: chateau a lawn? Right was that in Georgia? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: don't think I knew that it was Georgia, like Morning
Speaker 1: show Atlanta Morning, So I think it was like Box
Speaker 1: Live or something like that. I just I can still
Speaker 1: hear it. I haven't seen it in years. But if
Speaker 1: you don't know what we're talking about, there was a
Speaker 1: one of the early viral videos of this uh of
Speaker 1: this woman on location doing a story about wine in Georgia,
Speaker 1: and she was stomping on the wine and uh fell
Speaker 1: on a platform for some reason. Yeah, and she fell
Speaker 1: out of the barrel and and hurt herself. But it
Speaker 1: sounded like she was in very much heavy distress, like
Speaker 1: new dimensions of pain. Yeah, are this ounds that the
Speaker 1: woman made? I've never heard anything like it before or
Speaker 1: since neither. Um. Yeah, I'm very sure she's okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I don't mind talking about it now. It's
Speaker 1: not like she was, you know, named for life or
Speaker 1: anything like that. I was thinking I Love Lucy too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're very famous grape stompings. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: or she gets in like a grape throwing fight with
Speaker 1: the lady and Lucy she was always getting into trouble.
Speaker 1: When I was shot in the studio where they film
Speaker 1: that show one time in California, right there in Hollywood, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was kind of neat. Yeah, one of the grips
Speaker 1: just came over. He's like, you know, this is the
Speaker 1: I Love Lucy studio. I smelled the grapes. Uh, all right,
Speaker 1: so where were we? Um feet feet? Yeah? Which is
Speaker 1: this wonderful old world technique that I didn't know this.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that you have to do that for champagne.
Speaker 1: Is it just because it's so delicate? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's part of it. But also they kind of shy
Speaker 1: away from machinery and the method champagne was really yes,
Speaker 1: all right, it's a it's a traditional method, even though
Speaker 1: if you look back at the history of wine making,
Speaker 1: champagne is very relatively new. Like we're talking six hundreds. Right,
Speaker 1: they've been making wine for many thousands of years, so
Speaker 1: this is a fairly new invention, but it was still
Speaker 1: invented at a time where you mainly used human labor
Speaker 1: for for things like this. So yeah, they've they've tended
Speaker 1: to preserve that as much as possible. All Right, Well,
Speaker 1: you've got your juice, your white juice, and um, well
Speaker 1: they put it in stainless steel. That's unless you're super
Speaker 1: old world. I guess, uh, some people do use wood still,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that you're allowed to use for the for
Speaker 1: the initial fermentation where you're like you're just making the
Speaker 1: basic wine, you can use Yeah, so there it sits
Speaker 1: for a long time, ferments becomes still wine and uh,
Speaker 1: like we said, this is just the first fermentation and
Speaker 1: then you move on to the blending, which is where
Speaker 1: that all important seller master comes in. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you're seller master for a champagne house, you are unless
Speaker 1: you're very specific type of champagne house where you actually
Speaker 1: make champagne from growing the grapes to the finished product. Um,
Speaker 1: you 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, it is called
Speaker 1: the couve a, and the couve a is it's just
Speaker 1: that it's a blend of wine and it has mainly
Speaker 1: three 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: cuve 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 as 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
Speaker 1: blends and each blends a cue a. Again, one of
Speaker 1: the things they can take into account is the vintage
Speaker 1: the years. Yeah, Like you said that, if it's a
Speaker 1: vintage wine, it's just from the one year growing season.
Speaker 1: If it's non vintage, that means you can you're combining
Speaker 1: various years, right. And typically vintage wines I think tend
Speaker 1: to be more expensive, I have. I get the impression
Speaker 1: that they tend to be a little more revered. They
Speaker 1: definitely take longer to mature. Yeah, the fermentation process is
Speaker 1: longer than the non vintage. And you'll see this on
Speaker 1: the label. It'll say vintage, else it will say envy
Speaker 1: a lot of times. Um. The two other things for
Speaker 1: a seller master to take into account are um, the varietals, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the crew right yeah, c R you so crew
Speaker 1: is the c R E W or the c R
Speaker 1: U E with an umla over the yes. Um, the
Speaker 1: crew is it's a vineyard basically, So you can have
Speaker 1: grapes all from one vineyard, from different years and different riotals, um,
Speaker 1: and that'd still be what's called a single crew, or
Speaker 1: you could mix different crews, different vineyards grapes um to
Speaker 1: to create a couve. Yeah. And the Grand Crew. You
Speaker 1: might have seen that before on a bottle. Um that's
Speaker 1: a if you get the grand Crew status, then you're
Speaker 1: really cooking with gases. My dad used to say, uh.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen eighties, Um, well, initially there were
Speaker 1: only twelve villages that had that Grand Crew status, and
Speaker 1: then they expanded at the seventeen um because five more
Speaker 1: villages and I'm not going to try and pronounce all
Speaker 1: those were added to the list. And um, it says
Speaker 1: here that less than nine it's incredibly low. Of all
Speaker 1: the vineyard land in Champagne has Grand Crew rating, right,
Speaker 1: So again acres only nine percent of that is the
Speaker 1: top rated. Basically, it's saying this land is the primo
Speaker 1: land for growing Champagne grapes. So if you get grapes
Speaker 1: that are grown there by these people who really know
Speaker 1: what they're doing, it's you're gonna pay through the nose
Speaker 1: for it. So a Grand crew Um, Champagne is going
Speaker 1: to be pretty expensive. But there's a there's a reason
Speaker 1: behind it. It's not just marketing and varietals too. Like
Speaker 1: you said, there's three grapes, right, just those three, and
Speaker 1: depending on how you put them together, you can come
Speaker 1: up with a type of cuve as well. Right, So
Speaker 1: blanc to blanc means white of whites. That's made just
Speaker 1: with Chardonnay grapes blocked and no air is made with um,
Speaker 1: just one of the other black grapes, either the peanot
Speaker 1: moonier or the pen know noir. That's right, um. But
Speaker 1: all those three things are factored together to create a
Speaker 1: specific cuve. A. Well, and then you've got your rose
Speaker 1: that you mentioned earlier, your pink wine or is My
Speaker 1: friend Stacy calls it pink crack. It's good stuff. She
Speaker 1: gets ahold of that stuff. Watch out, yeah, um, and
Speaker 1: that is uh, well, they there's a couple of ways
Speaker 1: you can do this. Um. Sometimes you leave some of
Speaker 1: the skin for a little bit of time, but these
Speaker 1: days more or less you're gonna be adding a little
Speaker 1: bit of the red wine, um, peanut noir red wine
Speaker 1: to the couve. So I think there are still a
Speaker 1: wine that's different. If you leave the grapes on a
Speaker 1: little bit, you're gonna have pink champagne. If you actually
Speaker 1: add red wine afterwards, you're gonna have rose champagne. What's
Speaker 1: the difference? Says here. Rose is also known as pink champagne.
Speaker 1: I've seem I know this is what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: it gets confusing because you definitely get different things from
Speaker 1: different sources. But I have seen in multiple places that
Speaker 1: when you add red wine, that's rose, and that keeping
Speaker 1: the grapes in his pink champagne interesting. But um, apparently
Speaker 1: there's something like three million bottles of red wine or
Speaker 1: set aside every year just to make rose champagne. What
Speaker 1: a waste, man, I'm really I'm changing your mind about champagne.
Speaker 1: Uh No, you're not going to Emily likes rose rose champagne. No,
Speaker 1: I mean she'll have that, but just still rose. There's
Speaker 1: also rose with gas that's not champagne. It's just a
Speaker 1: little gassie. It's it's kind of different all that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, And it's not like I discriminate
Speaker 1: against wines either, but um, I'm I'm definitely prefer Champagne's
Speaker 1: are sparkling wines over still wine, like any day of
Speaker 1: the week. Yeah. Yeah, we're the opposite in more ways
Speaker 1: than one. Uh are we at the Riddler yet? Because
Speaker 1: this is my favorite part. Uh So we've got the
Speaker 1: blend and once you once you blend it. You have
Speaker 1: to put it in bottles. And one of the things
Speaker 1: chuck about the ao C this method champagne noise, is
Speaker 1: once you put in that bottle, it stays in there
Speaker 1: until the person who buys it and drinks it takes
Speaker 1: it out. You have to keep it in the same bottle,
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, why would you switch a bottle so
Speaker 1: it'd be weird anyway? Um, well you you used to
Speaker 1: want to decan it to get sentiment out. Um you
Speaker 1: might just put it in one bottle to reuse the bottles.
Speaker 1: Who knows, but you you. Once you put in the bottle,
Speaker 1: it's got to stay in the bottle. And after that
Speaker 1: initial que is blended, they put it in the bottle
Speaker 1: and they let it sit and depending on what kind
Speaker 1: um what kind of is if it's non vintage, it's
Speaker 1: gonna sit there for twelve more months for a total
Speaker 1: of a minimum of fifteen If if it's vintage, it's
Speaker 1: gonna sit there for another three years and just age
Speaker 1: in the bottle. That's right. And so at this point
Speaker 1: you're gonna start you want the bubbles, so you're gonna
Speaker 1: start that second for amentation 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 Charmett method, the tanks. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think the Old World method is well Jesus, you
Speaker 1: can't use tanks. You gotta use bottles. And I I don't
Speaker 1: you think old world is the right term. That's old ish.
Speaker 1: I'll just say 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 process is going on inside
Speaker 1: that bottle. Yeah, it's eating up all that sugar that
Speaker 1: you added and what's called the liquor to tarage, right,
Speaker 1: and when you add that in and you add the
Speaker 1: yeast in the yeaster, like this is great. We're gonna
Speaker 1: live here for generations eons by our time table. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like look at all this delicious sugar that we can eat,
Speaker 1: and they eat it and eat it, and they eat
Speaker 1: all of the sugar and the second fermentation process, and
Speaker 1: what we're doing here now is recreating those that natural
Speaker 1: fluke of a condition where it would get cold and
Speaker 1: then warm up again and that second fermentation process would
Speaker 1: start to make the CEO. Two same things happening here,
Speaker 1: but this is a very controlled version of that. So
Speaker 1: the use is eating it and like you said, they're
Speaker 1: dying and breaking open. And so when you're drinking champagne,
Speaker 1: part of what you're drinking are the the internal remnants
Speaker 1: of yeast cells that have spilled their contents into the champagne.
Speaker 1: That's why I don't drink it. But they also leave
Speaker 1: behind some stuff you don't want to drink, which are
Speaker 1: the cell structures, and that creates it's called sentiment. It's
Speaker 1: basically leftover cellular structure of yeast cells. And you want
Speaker 1: to get that out. Yeah, and that's through a process
Speaker 1: called riddling. And I mentioned the riddler is my favorite
Speaker 1: person in this process. It's a pretty thankless job to
Speaker 1: be the riddler, is it, I think? So I'll bet
Speaker 1: you get a lot of free champagne. Well sure, that's thanks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it's very solitary and redundant. Yeah yeah, repetitive.
Speaker 1: Uh So this riddler, they the wine at this point
Speaker 1: is stored upside down at a seventy five degree angle
Speaker 1: and that is allowing all this, all these dead yeast
Speaker 1: cells to collect down near the neck. Um. They by
Speaker 1: hand go in every day and turn these bottles one
Speaker 1: eighth the baturn, twenty thousand thirty day. They do this
Speaker 1: by hand, and they're just rotating these Uh it's I
Speaker 1: can't imagine doing this. I mean that your life's work.
Speaker 1: You've got to really be dedicated to your craft. Riddler,
Speaker 1: and it takes about four to six weeks of this
Speaker 1: this um dedicated attention. It's very fast process though, if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a riddler at work, oh yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: But they have to remember that they turn the bottle,
Speaker 1: so they make a little chalk mark on each one
Speaker 1: times in a day. Yeah, man, it's amazing. So they
Speaker 1: they they're turning the bottle and like you said, it's
Speaker 1: turned up in an angle. And the whole point of
Speaker 1: this is that you're slowly because you don't want to
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: them to move towards the neck, right. And the whole
Speaker 1: point is this is called maturing on the leaves, and
Speaker 1: the leaves I think are what the sediment is called,
Speaker 1: possibly or else what the Yeah, I think that's what
Speaker 1: it is. I think. And as it goes down and
Speaker 1: accumulates at the towards the front of the neck, you
Speaker 1: now have one of the last steps called gourge mont
Speaker 1: or disgorgement. Yes, And what you have is it's just
Speaker 1: a thing of sediment. Is it's accumulated at the neck
Speaker 1: and you put it in an ice bath. It's really
Speaker 1: amazing how they do this. Yeah. And then what they
Speaker 1: used to have to do is they would pop open
Speaker 1: a bottle, decant it, filter it, and um, they would
Speaker 1: pour it back so it's filtered. Because one of the
Speaker 1: things you'll note about champagne is it's very clear and
Speaker 1: it undergoes several different clarification steps, but that would have
Speaker 1: been one of them. This is the same thing, but
Speaker 1: this one is way cooler. They put the neck in
Speaker 1: an ice bath, a salt ice bath, so you know
Speaker 1: it's really cold because you know, salt lowers the freezing
Speaker 1: point of ice water. Yeah, and at this point that's
Speaker 1: going to create a little yeast plug. It's so cross
Speaker 1: up there towards the neck. And what they have to
Speaker 1: do then is get that plug out of there while
Speaker 1: maintaining the integrity of the rest of the wine that's inside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna lose some champagne. It's been a perfect procedure.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean that's part of the process, is
Speaker 1: to lose some because then they add stuff back in, right,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to. But um, so they remove while
Speaker 1: it says in here the cork. But these days I
Speaker 1: think that initial one is is a cap like a
Speaker 1: bottle cap, bottle cap can, that old world bottle cap.
Speaker 1: And you know, go on YouTube and look at a
Speaker 1: riddler at work and and just check this out. It's
Speaker 1: 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'd 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 point,
Speaker 1: and it forces that plug out and like you said,
Speaker 1: you lose just a little bit. Then you add, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe a little brandy, little sugar, a little white wine
Speaker 1: back in to get the you know, the proper amount
Speaker 1: of liquid inside the bottle. Right, that's called the dosage
Speaker 1: or the liquor dosage. Don't call it dosage because I
Speaker 1: did in my head for like half of this research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you oh, well 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 when that's going to
Speaker 1: stay in there until you uncork it and they tighten
Speaker 1: it down with that wire as are not so great
Speaker 1: article points that you can make into a little chair afterwards.
Speaker 1: That's what people do, right Uh. And you know you
Speaker 1: have to have that thing on there because it's like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pressure still building up in that thing,
Speaker 1: right um. And they've actually thanks to a eighteenth century
Speaker 1: French pharmacist named Antoine Beaumet, he came up with a
Speaker 1: device to measure the sugar content and wine. So now
Speaker 1: they know exactly how much sugar to put into the
Speaker 1: champagne to raise the pressure back up, because you want
Speaker 1: about five or six atmospheres of pressure or about I
Speaker 1: think sixty to seventy square or pounds per square inch
Speaker 1: of pressure in a bottle of wine. How much fifties
Speaker 1: seventy I think, or fifty to ninety, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: five or six atmospheres of pressure kind of 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 I
Speaker 1: can 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,
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, so the amount of sure,
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 afterward, so it's bone dry,
Speaker 1: and that's just for people who really prefer that, because yes,
Speaker 1: apparently the extra brute is the least popular. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can imagine, and I think I think the best selling
Speaker 1: is sort of that brute, which is sort of in
Speaker 1: the middle of dry and sweet or sec or demi sec,
Speaker 1: and then I think the last one is due d
Speaker 1: o u X is the sweetest of all non brute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but brute is drier than extra dry, which is kind
Speaker 1: of surprising. But if you ever, it's pretty easy to
Speaker 1: pick up, if you just read it once or twice
Speaker 1: You're like, Okay, that's that's how it's denoted. But all
Speaker 1: that is based on how much dosage you put in
Speaker 1: after you just just uh and go disgorge the yeast
Speaker 1: plug gorge. Yeah. 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: Cliquo at times. She's widowed at a very young age,
Speaker 1: sadly and took over her husband's wine business and supposedly
Speaker 1: invented that disgorging process herself, which is uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of simple when you look at it, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have thought to do it. No again, I
Speaker 1: mean they were decanning I'm back then and filtering it out.
Speaker 1: So and this was I think eighteen thirteen when the
Speaker 1: Widow Clicko came up with it. And about then is
Speaker 1: when Champagne the drink took off, at least in France
Speaker 1: and started to spread very quickly around the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Napoleon had a lot to do with that, right, I
Speaker 1: think Napoleon did. By World War One, Winston Churchill reminded
Speaker 1: everyone we're not fighting to save just France. Boys were
Speaker 1: fighting to save Champagne. Hurrah, Um, should we take another break?
Speaker 1: I think so? All right, we're gonna talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what the fuss is with this stuff after this?
Speaker 1: All right, So Josh the master wine maker seller master
Speaker 1: has uh walked us through the process. What a great
Speaker 1: job that would be? Yeah, I have a you know,
Speaker 1: my friend Robbie is a kind of a rock star
Speaker 1: winemaker and NAPA. Yeah, it's pretty great. He's he's like
Speaker 1: he's living the 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 anything.
Speaker 1: That's what that would have been. Man, there was like
Speaker 1: that was just ripe for jokes. I would have been
Speaker 1: that Thomas Satan Church to his Uh. Paul Giamatti, 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: he's very talented, and you know does quite well like
Speaker 1: making wine for other people. And he also has his
Speaker 1: own label uh linge Vane and Pearce and Meyer Wines
Speaker 1: plug plug uh. And when you go to his house
Speaker 1: and stay with him in his awesome guest house at
Speaker 1: the top of how Mountain, you get drunk on like
Speaker 1: amazing expensive wines that he opens, Like you're drinking that peria.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, this is Pellegrina. Oh excuse me. That's the
Speaker 1: Italian version of Perrier. It is. It's like the likersecco.
Speaker 1: What spumantepumante is Italian? Is it? It's sparkling right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess prosecco is Italian as well. I just remember
Speaker 1: that from when I was a kid, Martine and ROSSI.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. That's drilled in my brain Martini and Rossie,
Speaker 1: which probably is like crap, sparkling wine, isn't it. I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's good. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's I think that's probably what gave me
Speaker 1: your headache. That and all the low and brow Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that still around? I don't know. And though Bob
Speaker 1: and Doug drank now they drank some sort of was
Speaker 1: it made up? No, they drank Molson? Well is it
Speaker 1: the bats? I mean it was probably some Canadian beer.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get killed over this. We are sorry, everybody,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's move on then to what makes
Speaker 1: champagne so so expensive and so fancy, Like it has
Speaker 1: this um there's this notion you know that you drink
Speaker 1: it for celebrations or that you're like sort of the
Speaker 1: upper crust of society. I d if you're drinking champagne. Well, supposedly,
Speaker 1: there is an actual reason why champagne is associated with
Speaker 1: toasting the big events in life. Because for a thousand years,
Speaker 1: from about the ninth century to the nineteenth century, they
Speaker 1: had 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, champagne,
Speaker 1: has anyone ever done that? Uh, besides in movies. I
Speaker 1: 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. And um, I was like, I imagine
Speaker 1: if you were in real life around Matthew McConaughey, like
Speaker 1: in a room with one of his characters, and just
Speaker 1: how off putting in bizarre that experience would be. You know,
Speaker 1: because he's just said he just choose the scenery and
Speaker 1: everything he does. It's just so big that in real life,
Speaker 1: if you were interacting with that character, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: calm down, man, you're freaking me out. Well Watterson was
Speaker 1: pretty chill. Yeah, yeah, okay, but everybody since Waterson pretty
Speaker 1: much alright, boy, that's an interesting thing to think on
Speaker 1: a plane. Just hit me, hit me on the plane.
Speaker 1: I think if I was in a restaurant and something
Speaker 1: great happened, I would say waiter, another Gen and Tonic
Speaker 1: and they would go huh, They probably say you got it. Actually,
Speaker 1: I started calling those lime salads at my house. Nice,
Speaker 1: you're on the gin and tonic. Yeah, yeah, that usually
Speaker 1: happens around around April. Oh yeah, April two, you know, September.
Speaker 1: I got one for you. Um, gin and bitter lemon
Speaker 1: is a nice combo. Yeah yeah, And I thought bitter
Speaker 1: lemon was just like a fever tree drink that they
Speaker 1: make them. They make a good one, but everybody from
Speaker 1: like Canada dry to whoever else makes bitter lemon as well.
Speaker 1: So just give yourself a good bitter lemon and some gin.
Speaker 1: You can't love it? Um, we should do it. But
Speaker 1: we'll definitely do a podcast on gin at some point.
Speaker 1: Very interesting liquor complex. Can be sure. I got another
Speaker 1: one for you with that better lemon. If you want
Speaker 1: to get really fancy, get some St. George Terror terroir. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan. You had the dry rye, now
Speaker 1: you did you? You tried the terroar one, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: one that tastes like feet. No, that's the dry rye.
Speaker 1: I've tried all three of those St. George's and I'm
Speaker 1: like any of them. I'm a London dry guy. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: you'll still like it with bitter lemon. All right, everyone
Speaker 1: else you would like the Tara war St George with
Speaker 1: a bitter lemon, everyone else on the planet. Because all right,
Speaker 1: and I figured out what was up with the dry rye.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right. You can't make a martini out of
Speaker 1: that stuff. It kill you. It's not made for it.
Speaker 1: It's made for things like the gronies. It makes a
Speaker 1: killer negroni. It's really good. Yeah, I'm a I stick
Speaker 1: to my lime salad, you know. Okay, you know me
Speaker 1: and my basic names. But try the bitter lemon sometime
Speaker 1: with gin. Okay, you're you're dry limon. It's fine, all right, okay,
Speaker 1: but with with the bitter lemon instead of tonic. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll give it a dry And if I don't like it,
Speaker 1: then I'm just weird because everyone else in the world
Speaker 1: loves it. That I'm not saying that. You said that,
Speaker 1: Uh all right, where in the world worry? So we
Speaker 1: were talking about, um, what makes champagne so fancy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Uh well, like we said earlier, it's um you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very small region comparatively speaking. Uh so that
Speaker 1: will lend to the price and all these hand processes
Speaker 1: that they still might use or foot processes. It's a
Speaker 1: big one is gonna make it more expensive, and anytime
Speaker 1: the price is being driven up, uh, it's gonna have
Speaker 1: that sort of air of sophistication. Uh. And then, of
Speaker 1: course when the hip hop scene started kind of a
Speaker 1: using that in lyrics and popping Champagne on the yacht
Speaker 1: and the videos I'm on a boat, what was that
Speaker 1: okay with? Oh? I think I remember that. I don't
Speaker 1: remember who it was, but I don't think it was got.
Speaker 1: It was one of those Andy Sandberg shorts. Not little Wayne,
Speaker 1: who's the other little little bow Wow? No, he's just
Speaker 1: wow now really yeah, grows up man, the guy who
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, yeah, that guy. I have no idea
Speaker 1: you do little ones John? Yeah? Uh yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 1: But yes, it was a Andy Sandberg short. Yeah I do.
Speaker 1: I think I do remember that. But that definitely, um
Speaker 1: kind of solidified the sort of you know status. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: that's exactly the word I would I would suggest it
Speaker 1: was already right solidified, But it definitely didn't hurt, especially
Speaker 1: in the States here and with a whole new generation
Speaker 1: of people right right, like the younger generation, it's like
Speaker 1: Champagne human, right, But then all of a sudden little
Speaker 1: John's like, I got some champagne for real. I'm sure
Speaker 1: the champagne industry was like, seriously, keep doing it. Sure. So.
Speaker 1: The thing though, is there's um actual reason behind champagne
Speaker 1: being more expensive than your typical wine. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that all champagne or all sparkling lines are like
Speaker 1: out of your price range. No. I mean you can
Speaker 1: get some cheap sparkling wine that'll get good headache. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's not true. Like you can get Shandon wines for
Speaker 1: bucks and it's not going to give you a headache.
Speaker 1: I was talking about the six dollar good stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but twenty bucks. I mean, if you're gonna spring for
Speaker 1: a decent bottle of wine if it's New Year's Eve,
Speaker 1: why not, That's when I'll toast it. Uh. Alright, So
Speaker 1: twenty bucks will get you a good bottle of decent champagne,
Speaker 1: is what you're saying. Yes, not bad. Or you can
Speaker 1: spend hundreds of dollars, thousands, tens of thousands at auction,
Speaker 1: just like wine. If you want some super rare collectible wine,
Speaker 1: Champion apparently a quarter of a million dollars for a
Speaker 1: bottle at the Moscow Ritz Carlton, And that's not even
Speaker 1: something you drink, right, if you're a jackass, sure, but
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're you have to be a pack
Speaker 1: has to spend a quarter of a million dollars on
Speaker 1: a bottle of champagne anyway, you better drink it, frankly.
Speaker 1: But champagne you don't keep, you can you can, And
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of misunderstanding about it. Right, So
Speaker 1: a lot of people think that you keep champagne standing up.
Speaker 1: You do for about the first month. But if you're
Speaker 1: keeping in a seller, you want to keep it on
Speaker 1: its side. Like any bottle of wine, you want the
Speaker 1: wine touching the cork. But the reason that champagne actually
Speaker 1: ages in the bottle. It's just like wine that that cork.
Speaker 1: It's in there pretty good, but it's not air tight.
Speaker 1: There's a minimal amount of gas exchange going on, so
Speaker 1: that the wine, the champagne, continues to mature over the
Speaker 1: course of ten thirty years if you keep it. If
Speaker 1: you keep it, the key to champagne, apparently storing it
Speaker 1: is you want to avoid temperature fluctuations. You want to
Speaker 1: keep it at about the same temperature for the whole
Speaker 1: time you have it. Stored. To bury it in your backyard,
Speaker 1: sure is on its side deep and leave it there. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: and it will. You will find that all the worms
Speaker 1: drank it and be like worms. Bury it under the
Speaker 1: frost line, and you want to keep it out of
Speaker 1: the sunlight too well underground. But apparently as it ages,
Speaker 1: they've never had old champagne. But as it ages, its
Speaker 1: taste starts to mellow um and it takes on dried fruit, nutty,
Speaker 1: toasty honey notes are like the main notes that it hits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a bottle of don peregnon that was awful
Speaker 1: when we opened it, but we didn't It was every
Speaker 1: improper thing you could do, we did, including moving it
Speaker 1: in a hot truck from l A to Atlanta, 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 parts. Yeah, you know, I don't think I
Speaker 1: ever said, chuck that. Um. Those two quarter of a
Speaker 1: million dollar bottles of champagne were from a shipwreck that
Speaker 1: was headed to Russia to bring champagne to the tsar's family,
Speaker 1: and it's all the shipwrecked and they discovered it in
Speaker 1: the nineties and now they're selling it at the Ritz
Speaker 1: Carlton too. What did you say? And I think that's
Speaker 1: the one that's like a collector's piece, right, I don't
Speaker 1: know you like to put it on your wall. That's
Speaker 1: not from what I 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 in, to
Speaker 1: pour it, consume it, because uh, if you if you
Speaker 1: don't know what you're doing and you've seen too many movies,
Speaker 1: you might try and pop that cork out across the room.
Speaker 1: It's very dangerous. It is very dangerous and people get injured. Right,
Speaker 1: are there deaths. I think I didn't see it, or
Speaker 1: is that like an urban legend. I would guess an
Speaker 1: urban legend. I could be wrong. I'm thinking if you
Speaker 1: died from getting hit with a cork, you had a
Speaker 1: pre existing condition. M Is that covered? I don't know
Speaker 1: under Obamacare. Sure, I guess we'll see. So. Uh, you'll
Speaker 1: get about six flutes if you're pouring properly out of
Speaker 1: a bottle of champagne. I want to serve it between
Speaker 1: forty and forty five degrees celsius or fahrenheit. That's fahrenheit, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh. If you are caught with your
Speaker 1: pants down at a party, just go champagne and it'll
Speaker 1: get you out of it. Um. And you want to
Speaker 1: chill it very quickly, you can put it in an
Speaker 1: ice bath and not to get out that yeast plug,
Speaker 1: but just to make it cold fast, just like you
Speaker 1: would beer or something. All Right, the neck, you mean, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the whole bottle. If you want to serve it. You
Speaker 1: got a hot bottle of champagne and you're moving truck,
Speaker 1: throw it in an ice bath for about twenty minutes
Speaker 1: and you should be good to go. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: there's a party trick. You can do too, where if
Speaker 1: you put just the neck in the ice bath, you
Speaker 1: can use what's called a saber. You can actually use anything.
Speaker 1: I've seen somebody do it on on video with a shoe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You don't even have to freeze it if you're a
Speaker 1: good 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 in there at about nine p s I
Speaker 1: where the scene meets the lip, it's about less glass
Speaker 1: and so that's a vulnerable area. And that's what makes
Speaker 1: 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, right, 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, Okay, alright, and um, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat to do because you're not like I
Speaker 1: think for a while I thought you were just knocking
Speaker 1: the cork out. That's what I thought as well. But
Speaker 1: you're you're you're knocking the glass off. Yeah, the top
Speaker 1: the top lip of the of the bottle is coming
Speaker 1: clean off if you're doing it correctly, and it's it's
Speaker 1: that is also dangerous if you don't know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: because that thing will fly or more. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: actual glass. What you want to do is have a
Speaker 1: sharp shooter handy to shoot it out of the sky
Speaker 1: before it hurts anybody, that's right, and have everyone staying
Speaker 1: behind you. That's the traditional way. Um, how you really
Speaker 1: open it is and this is a uh even if
Speaker 1: you're not just popping the cork, you might like twist
Speaker 1: the cork off. You want to twist the bottle. That's
Speaker 1: sort of the number one rule to open it cleanly
Speaker 1: and non dangerously and without why champagne, you know, getting
Speaker 1: all over the place, like when you open an a
Speaker 1: tonic bottle. Her soda, anything fizzy. That's one of our
Speaker 1: traditions backstage at Stuff You Should Know shows is Josh
Speaker 1: opens a tonic bottles everywhere and you go, what's the
Speaker 1: deal every single time? Um, I think because I have
Speaker 1: so many lime salads and just I know, you gotta
Speaker 1: go easy with those tonic bottles. I do. And it's
Speaker 1: still spray me. It's it's almost comical. Um No, it's
Speaker 1: pretty funny. Um. So you're twisting the bottle. Uh, if
Speaker 1: you have a towel, you can hold it over the cork,
Speaker 1: but you really don't need it as long as you're
Speaker 1: kind of holding it with your hand and twist that bottle.
Speaker 1: Put your thumb in the punt as they call it,
Speaker 1: which is that the area the bottom of the bottle,
Speaker 1: the div it. Yeah, the punt the concave part of
Speaker 1: the punt. Sure, let's put your thumb in the punt um.
Speaker 1: And then you've got it open and you tilt the
Speaker 1: glass importance a little bit for a little bit more.
Speaker 1: You want about three quarters of a flute and uh,
Speaker 1: put your pinkie up and go to town. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I did a brain stuff on what the best kind
Speaker 1: of glass for champagne is and apparently the tulip is
Speaker 1: it's a combination between the coupe and the flute um.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen it before. No, I didn't see that one.
Speaker 1: It's I know, the tulip class tulips um. But apparently
Speaker 1: they allow for the most sparkle and if you if
Speaker 1: you have the so the bubbles coming up the French
Speaker 1: call effervescence. And if you look at a glass of
Speaker 1: champagne that you're just holding there in front of you,
Speaker 1: when they bubble up to the top, they accumulate into
Speaker 1: a foam and uh, that is called moose like shock
Speaker 1: a lot moose, remember top secret. Oh yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: not that. It's just moose is what they call. Or
Speaker 1: foam is another way to put it. That's what they
Speaker 1: call it. And so actually when you're creating the um
Speaker 1: second fermentation process of the champagne making what the the
Speaker 1: method champagne was, it's called um the prize demuse or
Speaker 1: the foam creation. Wow, 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, huzza huzzah, I
Speaker 1: think is the traditional thing you're supposed to say. So
Speaker 1: you like Champagne, yet it's just not for me. That's fine,
Speaker 1: don't feel bad for me. I want then, uh if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about Champagne, go get you 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 bar, it's time for a listener mayo. Alright,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this one. Uh well, getting the nomenclature
Speaker 1: corect something we always strive to do and don't always do. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: let me start by saying, you've been listening to your
Speaker 1: show for two years. That add so much joy, laughter,
Speaker 1: and knowledge to my life. Now. You're always intentional and
Speaker 1: sensitive about the language you used on your show. And
Speaker 1: while listening to the MS episode, I noticed something I've
Speaker 1: heard you two say in the past. I work in
Speaker 1: suicide prevention and hope to change the culture and reduce
Speaker 1: the stigma around suicide. As you know, one of the
Speaker 1: first steps of doing that is examining the language we use.
Speaker 1: The phrase commit suicide. It's very common, of course, and
Speaker 1: has been used for a very long time. However, the
Speaker 1: work commit makes it sound criminal. This perpetuates a stigma
Speaker 1: that there's something bad or wrong with someone who's experiencing
Speaker 1: thoughts of suicide, making it less likely that they will
Speaker 1: reach out and ask for help. I want to encourage
Speaker 1: you guys to use the word died by suicide or
Speaker 1: 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 a heck of a k. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know what, I never thought about that, But that
Speaker 1: is not true. It's not true. You have because we've
Speaker 1: been called out on this before. Really yes, but I
Speaker 1: think we've been done a listener mail on it before.
Speaker 1: But it's so ingrained. I know, to say commit and
Speaker 1: then complete. It just sounds like they finished their homework
Speaker 1: or something like that, but died by suicide. I could
Speaker 1: I can get behind that. I will try, but it's
Speaker 1: just so hard to not say committed. What though, if
Speaker 1: you're saying if it hasn't happened, you're saying someone was
Speaker 1: going to attempt thinking attempting suicide. Okay, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that one's kosher. 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: um lay it on us, send us an email to
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.