Selects: How Champagne Works

to tell everyone your last name? Jerry? We've done it before. Okay, what if they go try to find on Facebook and find out she doesn't actually exist? It's all just a plant, fake Facebook page that we've created. I know that she she is an actual plant, right that crows in the corner feed me. I am worried about this one. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. Oh, why you were worried about the wine one, for the same reasons we didn't do the wine one. I know. That's why.

That's exactly why, exactly for those reasons. No one knows anything about champagne. People spend lifetimes learning the stuff. Yes, but we have a show, and everyone knows that we don't spend a lifetime learning about all we talk about that. We just do our research and we try to find the most interesting stuff to explain how something works. I know, but these with anytime it's something where someone is like such a huge like where it's such a big thing

for so many people. Uh, I just know we're gonna mess up pronunciations. It's French, so champagne, right, Champagne. I think that's how bugs Bunny always pronounced it. Yeah, so you're you're following a grand tradition. I didn't know he was a drinker. Well we are going to talk about champagne's a little late. Now. Do you like champagne? I love champagne? Okay, I love it. I don't I mainly drink sparkling wine and I don't really drink champagne itself.

But buddy, this article made me want to drink some champagne. Well, you do a little proseccolla. Sure, I don't really discriminate, Okay, I do. I don't drink any of it. You don't like champagne, huh nah, I don't like sparkling wine. It's not just not it's not for chuck it save love it man um. I particularly love Shandon out in California. I will say, one time, at a party, though many years ago, like in the nineties, I drank a lot of just champagne, only champagne. This might be why you

don't like champagne. The only time in my life. No, I actually, uh, I felt like a twelve year old girl. That was wonderful. That's your problem. No, champagne is no know, I mean silly and bubbly. It's fun like I played hop scotch and stuff like that. Yeah, I know, that's terrible. Why would you ever want to do that again. I don't mean I felt like a girl because I was drinking champagne. That's what I thought. You meant, like, well,

there's your problem. Champagne is not a girly drink. No. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who do think that. Buddy, I will drink pink champagne at with your finger up at a bull fight. Oh gross. Yeah, you gotta do something to wash the pain away. Uh. Yeah, it's just not for me. Uh. And that gave me a such a bad headache. The next day, I didn't go back to the well, I'll have you know, I have someone if someone wants to toast me, yeah, I

won't go. No, I'm not drinking that. Well, you were probably drinking pretty sweet, Champagne, weren't you. Usually the higher the sugar content and anything, that the more um of a hangover you're gonna have. Yeah, I don't know. Huh, Well, I love it good. You mean I've been to shand on twice. Okay, when on Shandon cruise once, big fans of Shandon. Where is that? Hint? Hint, It's out in um Napa Napa Valley. It's famously attached to Mowett and Shandon.

And then Shandon went and said, hey, we're gonna open up something in California too. You just like cool because their tear war is it's got a good tar war. And that's another thing too. This is what I'm nervous about. I'm not nervous about getting it wrong. I'm nervous about coming across like it's just a complete jackass sophisticate. You know, I'm not at all. I just like Champagne. I'm I know more now about Champagne doing this research for the last couple of days than I ever had before, so

I definitely don't put myself out there. It's like a UM an expert in any way, shape or form. All right, So that's called everybody put your emails away. Ten minutes of caveats by Josh and Chuck. See that was French and you pronounced it great? Is that Latin? All right? Well, I guess if you don't know anything about Champagne, you might have noticed that we already said both the word champagne and sparkling wine. And um, I think most people

probably know this, but some people may not. Um. Champagne is a region in France, and uh, technically you were only supposed to say Champagne for sparkling wine if it comes from that region. So all champagne that's sparkling wine is sparkling wine, but all sparkling wine is not Champagne.

That's right. That that I think that's simplified. Uh. In Champagne itself, the region is about hour and a half ninety minutes or so northeast of Paris or east, and this UM article points out that it's one of the least visited regions of France. But I bet, I bet they have their fair amount of enthusiasts that go to but maybe just not as many. I don't know. It's the south of France or other Burgundy maybe right, well,

Burgundy comes to mind for sure. Apparently Sablie, I didn't realize that that was a wine growing region, did you. I don't think I did. And the very famous mad dog Nutrian so silly, so um so, Champagne is a region. It's also a sparkling wine. But yeah, like you said, you you can't make sparkling wine outside of this this Champagne region. And you can even make sparkling wine inside

of the Champagne region. And unless you're following a very strictly controlled process within this particular region of France, you are not allowed anywhere in the world to call your sparkling wine Champagne. It's what's what's called an Appalachian applechian. Now that's a mountain range. It's what's called a um Appalachian trail Appellatian de origine control or AOC is what

we're gonna call it. But it's basically the same thing with um Bourbon here in the United States eights right, Yeah, where you have to follow specific rules, and you have to make it within a specific region. And the whole point is it's you don't want just any schmo making something that's similar to your product but not nearly as good, that's not going through anywhere near the painstaking amount of process um and labor that you're doing and still call

it the same thing you're calling it. You don't want to do that. Yeah, now you have to restrict it, especially the French. You know that they're not going to be all willy nilly about that. That's their region. Yeah, apparently there's something like food acres, which I don't think is a lot. And what are those cities? The two main cities are rem and Epernay. But uh, we even have a thing in here that says if you say M,

then you're an American city slicker. If you say realms M. I've seen plenty wrong, is what they say in the in that help me out article that we got. I think you just are in some fans in France with that one. Well, by any other name, it is still Champagne. And those are the cities, and there are but three grapes that you can use to make champagne. You can't just say oh, that that muscadine looks nice. They do here in Georgia. Let's throw it in a bottle in

fer minute. Uh, pete, put this in your mouth to spit it up in the bottle. There are three grapes and they are the pinot noir grape, the Chardonnay grape, and um, how do you pronounce that last one? Peanut mon okay, which is another dark grape or red grape or black grape I think is what they call it. Yeah, if you ever talked to a real wine person, you don't know the lingo, you're gonna be confused quick when they say things like black grapes, right, I mean, like,

what the heck is a black grape? But if you dig into it, you start to find that there's a lot of overlapping words. There's a lot of multiple terms that describe the same thing. Yeah, black grape, red grape, same thing. Yeah, you know, purple grape. Well not if you say that, you're gonna get laughed out of nava, Right, I like the purple grapes concorde, I think is what they're calling. But chardon Ay is um of those three is the only all white grape. So um. And you

know a lot of people might not know this. It's the same with uh still wine. But you know inside that black skin is white pulp. Yeah, depending on when you pick the grape. So if you pick it early, before it has a chance to turn reddish, you can conceivably squeeze clear or white grape juice from red or black grapes. That's right, And that's what's happening in the case of Champagne. Yeah, because if you look at it, you're like, well, I mean, this is this is clear?

How is this made from red grapes? Well, as we'll see later on, you have dompering. You want to think I should well, we should go ahead and talk about that. I guess. Well, let's talk about Champagne a little bit for first, and then we'll get to Domparing. So the region itself is pretty ancient. Um. The first vineyards in Champagne were planted by the Romans, who also mine chalk in the area, and there's extensive chalk quarries that are

underground that have served as Champagne sellers for generations. So the place has been making wine. The region has been making wine for millennia. UM. But it wasn't until about the sixteen seventeen hundreds when they really kind of took what was a naturally occurring problem, which was carbonation happening in their wine, and went to town with it. They said,

if you can't beat them, join them. So they took this thing that was viewed as a flaw in their wine, carbonation sparkling wine, and they figured out how to make it even more so and made it its own thing. Yeah, and that um in that region, that chalk is very key to uh what you end up getting because it's very reflective because it's white. It is so it reflects the sun light from the ground back up to the leaves. Right. Yeah,

it's a very unique region. Like and apparently it's uh like, if you stumbled upon that region today in our advanced wine making techniques and sparkling wine techniques, you probably wouldn't say, hey, this is a great place to have a vineyard, right you go, Sacra blue. This soil is terrible. Uh, well you might um because it's I think it's a little tougher to grow like it. It's a very fine line between getting a successful uh harvest in that region, which

makes it I think very special yeah, it does. Like Um. Apparently they have cold, short, wet growing seasons, and apparently that's where the original Um sparkling wine and Champagne came from.

It was a freak of natural um, natural climate, and natural conditions growing conditions right, because as we'll see, a second um fermentation is what creates the carbonation, and that would happen naturally because they would harvest the wine, make wine, store it, and then it would get um cold all of a sudden, like early before the fermentation process was done, so fermentation would basically stop, but then there'd be a lot of sugar and yeasts left in their wine that

hadn't fermented when they started it. So when Um spring came around again and things started to warm up, a second fermentation process started, and that's really what kicked off the bubbles. But for a long time the people in in Um Champagne and the Champagne region were tearing their hair out because they didn't want this. It was a

sign that their wine was terrible, poorly made. And like I said, it wasn't until Don Perann Young came along Um who didn't like it himself, uh, but was one of the people who created a lot of the techniques that helped um established Champagne as the sparkling wine capital of the world. So he didn't care for it, No, he didn't. He didn't, Um he could. He called it mad wine, I think, is what he calls. Yeah. He was a Benedictine monk in the area. And and and

he was the seller master, which is um. If you are a seller master, you are in charge as far as Champagne goes with basically making the master blend of the Champagne are talking, yes, the cove and when you put it together, that's the assemblange, right, So Don Perignon was the guy in charge of that for this abbey. He was a monk. His name was Pierre Parignon. Dom

is like you knowes you're a monk, Benedictine monk. And he was one of the ones who established a lot of the groundwork for creating sparkling wine, creating Champagne very interesting like um up to that point you would have um sparkling wines in your cellar. But they were using like wood and hemp to like stop these bottles. Well,

that didn't work all that well. Bottles were very frequently explode and sells were very dangerous places to be because one one of these stoppers came out, it shoot across the room, hit another bottle, and that bottle stopped would come out, and all of a sudden you have a chain reaction of these wooden stoppers like flying at your head. Yeah,

three stooges or something. Right, So, um, dom Perignon came up with the idea of using cork stoppers in thicker English type bottles that could withstand the pressure, um holding them down with little rope muzzles. Now we use foil and wire. What's that called a muzzle? Yeah, a muzzle. There's a French word for it, but I can't find it my note, something like that. So he came up

with a bunch of stuff. He also was the first one to start blending wines from the region, and as we'll talk about in a few Um, that's the basis of champagne. It's a blend champagne. Champagne is a blend of wine. That's right. Should we take a break ourselves? Yeah, I'm getting excited. Don't you want some champagne? Sorry? Really no, I mean if you opened a bottle of champagne in here,

I would I would drink a flute. Yeah, because uh, hey, it's rude when you're offered something to turn your nose about it unless you're under twenty one and be it might help me to relax a little bit. Yeah, it really would about this thing, you'd feel great. Um. Should we talk a little bit about uh the champagne method. Yes, what the French call method champagne? Was okay, method champagne, so to say, if the closures set them. Um, this is one reason why champagne is a bit more expensive,

or can be a bit more expensive. Um is because there's there's a lot of processes involved, and not like there's not with still wine, but champagne kind of takes it a step further. It's time consuming and it there are people's hands and feet involved a lot of times. And like you said, it's it is. It starts with making wine. Actually it starts even further back to that. It starts with growing great, that's right. Uh. But fermentation you know all wines are for a minute of course,

and that's the um. That's when sugar breaks down from the grape juice turns it into alcohol, delicious delicious alcohol, and that is called wine. Um. And just like regular wine still wine. Like you said, I guess we shouldn't call it regular wine, just still wine. Um. They start basic, they start with those grapes. Uh. And in the case of Champagne, they are pressed with human feet, which still happens. And I can't help but think of that video still after all these years, that poor lady h and uh

chateau a lawn? Right was that in Georgia? Yeah? I don't think I knew that it was Georgia, like Morning show Atlanta Morning, So I think it was like Box Live or something like that. I just I can still hear it. I haven't seen it in years. But if you don't know what we're talking about, there was a one of the early viral videos of this uh of this woman on location doing a story about wine in Georgia, and she was stomping on the wine and uh fell on a platform for some reason. Yeah, and she fell

out of the barrel and and hurt herself. But it sounded like she was in very much heavy distress, like new dimensions of pain. Yeah, are this ounds that the woman made? I've never heard anything like it before or since neither. Um. Yeah, I'm very sure she's okay. Yeah, that's why I don't mind talking about it now. It's not like she was, you know, named for life or anything like that. I was thinking I Love Lucy too.

Oh yeah, they're very famous grape stompings. Yeah, you know, or she gets in like a grape throwing fight with the lady and Lucy she was always getting into trouble. When I was shot in the studio where they film that show one time in California, right there in Hollywood, Yeah, it was kind of neat. Yeah, one of the grips just came over. He's like, you know, this is the I Love Lucy studio. I smelled the grapes. Uh, all right,

so where were we? Um feet feet? Yeah? Which is this wonderful old world technique that I didn't know this. I didn't know that you have to do that for champagne. Is it just because it's so delicate? Yeah, I think that's part of it. But also they kind of shy away from machinery and the method champagne was really yes, all right, it's a it's a traditional method, even though if you look back at the history of wine making,

champagne is very relatively new. Like we're talking six hundreds. Right, they've been making wine for many thousands of years, so this is a fairly new invention, but it was still invented at a time where you mainly used human labor for for things like this. So yeah, they've they've tended to preserve that as much as possible. All Right, Well, you've got your juice, your white juice, and um, well they put it in stainless steel. That's unless you're super

old world. I guess, uh, some people do use wood still, but yeah, that you're allowed to use for the for the initial fermentation where you're like you're just making the basic wine, you can use Yeah, so there it sits for a long time, ferments becomes still wine and uh, like we said, this is just the first fermentation and then you move on to the blending, which is where

that all important seller master comes in. Right, So if you're seller master for a champagne house, you are unless you're very specific type of champagne house where you actually

make champagne from growing the grapes to the finished product. Um, you were probably going around the champagne region trying different champagne's, are trying different wines still wines, and you're coming up within your head a blend of all these different wines, and that blend, as we said before, it is called the couve a, and the couve a is it's just that it's a blend of wine and it has mainly three different factors involved that you have to take any consideration.

If you're the seller master, right, if it's a vintage cuve a vintage blend of wines, then that means it's using grapes that we're all grown in the same year, the same growing season. Yeah, and I imagine these seller masters,

I mean he said they're tasting things. I'm sure they are, but I imagine these seller masters in Champagne also kind of know exactly where they're gonna go for most of these sure, and they also would know like, well, if you as have two thousand seven vintage wine that was a great year, or um that year was kind of rough, it might take a at a neat edge to it some other two thousand nine grapes. I'm using too, Right, these are what these people are walking around within their heads,

that kind of that level of information. So they're putting it all together. They come up with these clever little blends and each blends a cue a. Again, one of the things they can take into account is the vintage the years. Yeah, Like you said that, if it's a vintage wine, it's just from the one year growing season. If it's non vintage, that means you can you're combining various years, right. And typically vintage wines I think tend to be more expensive, I have. I get the impression

that they tend to be a little more revered. They definitely take longer to mature. Yeah, the fermentation process is longer than the non vintage. And you'll see this on the label. It'll say vintage, else it will say envy a lot of times. Um. The two other things for a seller master to take into account are um, the varietals, Yeah, and the crew right yeah, c R you so crew is the c R E W or the c R

U E with an umla over the yes. Um, the crew is it's a vineyard basically, So you can have grapes all from one vineyard, from different years and different riotals, um, and that'd still be what's called a single crew, or you could mix different crews, different vineyards grapes um to to create a couve. Yeah. And the Grand Crew. You might have seen that before on a bottle. Um that's a if you get the grand Crew status, then you're really cooking with gases. My dad used to say, uh.

In the mid nineteen eighties, Um, well, initially there were only twelve villages that had that Grand Crew status, and then they expanded at the seventeen um because five more villages and I'm not going to try and pronounce all those were added to the list. And um, it says here that less than nine it's incredibly low. Of all the vineyard land in Champagne has Grand Crew rating, right, So again acres only nine percent of that is the top rated. Basically, it's saying this land is the primo

land for growing Champagne grapes. So if you get grapes that are grown there by these people who really know what they're doing, it's you're gonna pay through the nose for it. So a Grand crew Um, Champagne is going to be pretty expensive. But there's a there's a reason behind it. It's not just marketing and varietals too. Like you said, there's three grapes, right, just those three, and depending on how you put them together, you can come up with a type of cuve as well. Right, So

blanc to blanc means white of whites. That's made just with Chardonnay grapes blocked and no air is made with um, just one of the other black grapes, either the peanot moonier or the pen know noir. That's right, um. But all those three things are factored together to create a specific cuve. A. Well, and then you've got your rose that you mentioned earlier, your pink wine or is My friend Stacy calls it pink crack. It's good stuff. She

gets ahold of that stuff. Watch out, yeah, um, and that is uh, well, they there's a couple of ways you can do this. Um. Sometimes you leave some of the skin for a little bit of time, but these days more or less you're gonna be adding a little bit of the red wine, um, peanut noir red wine to the couve. So I think there are still a wine that's different. If you leave the grapes on a little bit, you're gonna have pink champagne. If you actually

add red wine afterwards, you're gonna have rose champagne. What's the difference? Says here. Rose is also known as pink champagne. I've seem I know this is what I'm saying. So it gets confusing because you definitely get different things from different sources. But I have seen in multiple places that when you add red wine, that's rose, and that keeping the grapes in his pink champagne interesting. But um, apparently there's something like three million bottles of red wine or

set aside every year just to make rose champagne. What a waste, man, I'm really I'm changing your mind about champagne. Uh No, you're not going to Emily likes rose rose champagne. No, I mean she'll have that, but just still rose. There's also rose with gas that's not champagne. It's just a little gassie. It's it's kind of different all that stuff. Yeah,

I love it. Yeah, And it's not like I discriminate against wines either, but um, I'm I'm definitely prefer Champagne's are sparkling wines over still wine, like any day of the week. Yeah. Yeah, we're the opposite in more ways than one. Uh are we at the Riddler yet? Because this is my favorite part. Uh So we've got the blend and once you once you blend it. You have

to put it in bottles. And one of the things chuck about the ao C this method champagne noise, is once you put in that bottle, it stays in there until the person who buys it and drinks it takes it out. You have to keep it in the same bottle, all right, Yeah, why would you switch a bottle so it'd be weird anyway? Um, well you you used to want to decan it to get sentiment out. Um you might just put it in one bottle to reuse the bottles. Who knows, but you you. Once you put in the bottle,

it's got to stay in the bottle. And after that initial que is blended, they put it in the bottle and they let it sit and depending on what kind um what kind of is if it's non vintage, it's gonna sit there for twelve more months for a total of a minimum of fifteen If if it's vintage, it's gonna sit there for another three years and just age

in the bottle. That's right. And so at this point you're gonna start you want the bubbles, so you're gonna start that second for amentation process by adding sugar and yeast. Then you drop the temperature on your cooler uh to about fifty to sixty, which is cooler than the initial fermentation process. And um, well you can also do this in the tank. Like they're different methods, but right, that's

the that's called the Charmett method, the tanks. Yeah, but I think the Old World method is well Jesus, you can't use tanks. You gotta use bottles. And I I don't you think old world is the right term. That's old ish. I'll just say old But I think old world means something very specific with wine. Oh yeah, I can see that. I think it means non Californian. See, this is where we get in trouble. Uh So this is a very

slow fermentation process, the second one. And um, the yeast is is living and dying and those cells are breaking apart, and it's this really interesting process is going on inside that bottle. Yeah, it's eating up all that sugar that you added and what's called the liquor to tarage, right, and when you add that in and you add the yeast in the yeaster, like this is great. We're gonna

live here for generations eons by our time table. Yeah, Like look at all this delicious sugar that we can eat, and they eat it and eat it, and they eat all of the sugar and the second fermentation process, and what we're doing here now is recreating those that natural fluke of a condition where it would get cold and then warm up again and that second fermentation process would start to make the CEO. Two same things happening here,

but this is a very controlled version of that. So the use is eating it and like you said, they're dying and breaking open. And so when you're drinking champagne, part of what you're drinking are the the internal remnants of yeast cells that have spilled their contents into the champagne. That's why I don't drink it. But they also leave behind some stuff you don't want to drink, which are the cell structures, and that creates it's called sentiment. It's

basically leftover cellular structure of yeast cells. And you want to get that out. Yeah, and that's through a process called riddling. And I mentioned the riddler is my favorite person in this process. It's a pretty thankless job to be the riddler, is it, I think? So I'll bet you get a lot of free champagne. Well sure, that's thanks. Yeah, but it's it's very solitary and redundant. Yeah yeah, repetitive.

Uh So this riddler, they the wine at this point is stored upside down at a seventy five degree angle and that is allowing all this, all these dead yeast cells to collect down near the neck. Um. They by hand go in every day and turn these bottles one eighth the baturn, twenty thousand thirty day. They do this by hand, and they're just rotating these Uh it's I can't imagine doing this. I mean that your life's work.

You've got to really be dedicated to your craft. Riddler, and it takes about four to six weeks of this this um dedicated attention. It's very fast process though, if you've ever seen a riddler at work, oh yeah, you know. But they have to remember that they turn the bottle, so they make a little chalk mark on each one times in a day. Yeah, man, it's amazing. So they they they're turning the bottle and like you said, it's

turned up in an angle. And the whole point of this is that you're slowly because you don't want to disturb the champagne. It's still it's still maturing, right, Um, but this is towards the end of that maturation phase, either that twelve month or that thirty six month minimum. And as you're turning it, what you're doing is kind of shaking the bottle a little bit too, and you're just trying to get the yeast cells what's left of

them to move towards the neck, right. And the whole point is this is called maturing on the leaves, and the leaves I think are what the sediment is called, possibly or else what the Yeah, I think that's what it is. I think. And as it goes down and accumulates at the towards the front of the neck, you now have one of the last steps called gourge mont or disgorgement. Yes, And what you have is it's just a thing of sediment. Is it's accumulated at the neck and you put it in an ice bath. It's really

amazing how they do this. Yeah. And then what they used to have to do is they would pop open a bottle, decant it, filter it, and um, they would pour it back so it's filtered. Because one of the things you'll note about champagne is it's very clear and it undergoes several different clarification steps, but that would have been one of them. This is the same thing, but

this one is way cooler. They put the neck in an ice bath, a salt ice bath, so you know it's really cold because you know, salt lowers the freezing point of ice water. Yeah, and at this point that's going to create a little yeast plug. It's so cross up there towards the neck. And what they have to do then is get that plug out of there while maintaining the integrity of the rest of the wine that's inside. Yeah, like you're gonna lose some champagne. It's been a perfect procedure.

Well yeah, I mean that's part of the process, is to lose some because then they add stuff back in, right, which we'll get to. But um, so they remove while it says in here the cork. But these days I think that initial one is is a cap like a bottle cap, bottle cap can, that old world bottle cap. And you know, go on YouTube and look at a riddler at work and and just check this out. It's

it's pretty neat. Like it's a fast process as well. Um, did you see the how it's made on that they pop it out and a surprisingly small amount comes out. Like I thought it'd just they'd be like, oh god, oh jeez, like it could be the most stressful job in the world. But you know, enough comes out. It's foaming over, but um, it's not like a just a tremendous amount, and then they smell it to make sure it's not. The dude I saw put his thumb over it real quick, so like it wasn't foaming over at all.

Maybe that's what I saw or maybe that's what he was doing. I didn't catch it. Yeah, pretty interesting though. So the riddlers is doing this by hand, uh, because there's you know, carbon dioxide gas in there at this point, and it forces that plug out and like you said, you lose just a little bit. Then you add, uh, maybe a little brandy, little sugar, a little white wine back in to get the you know, the proper amount of liquid inside the bottle. Right, that's called the dosage

or the liquor dosage. Don't call it dosage because I did in my head for like half of this research. Yeah, and then you oh, well that's dosage. Well that's when it helps to watch videos, um, and then they put that final cork in place. Is when that's going to stay in there until you uncork it and they tighten it down with that wire as are not so great article points that you can make into a little chair afterwards.

That's what people do, right Uh. And you know you have to have that thing on there because it's like there's a lot of pressure still building up in that thing, right um. And they've actually thanks to a eighteenth century French pharmacist named Antoine Beaumet, he came up with a

device to measure the sugar content and wine. So now they know exactly how much sugar to put into the champagne to raise the pressure back up, because you want about five or six atmospheres of pressure or about I think sixty to seventy square or pounds per square inch of pressure in a bottle of wine. How much fifties seventy I think, or fifty to ninety, but it's definitely

five or six atmospheres of pressure kind of average. Okay, So um, they know how much of that liqueur de dosage to put in, how much sugar to put I can to raise the the atmosphere back up and the other reason you want to do that to chuck is when you're adding that that sugar back in that yeast, all the sugar that was in there, and turn it into carbon dioxide that you put in for the second fermentation.

And when they did, they made this champagne as dry as a bone an extra brute, so the amount of sure, it's actually more than that. It's brute natural well, I call it a double X brute. It's crazy dry. I've never had it, but I can only imagine how. Yeah, there's there's one where they don't put in any dossage. They don't add any sugar afterward, so it's bone dry, and that's just for people who really prefer that, because yes,

apparently the extra brute is the least popular. Yeah, I can imagine, and I think I think the best selling is sort of that brute, which is sort of in the middle of dry and sweet or sec or demi sec, and then I think the last one is due d o u X is the sweetest of all non brute. Yeah, but brute is drier than extra dry, which is kind of surprising. But if you ever, it's pretty easy to pick up, if you just read it once or twice

You're like, Okay, that's that's how it's denoted. But all that is based on how much dosage you put in after you just just uh and go disgorge the yeast plug gorge. Yeah. Uh one of my least favorite words. By the way, that's a bad one. Um. Is this true about Madame Clique from what I saw? Yeah, Um, she was an entrepreneur famously. In fact, she's called Widow Cliquo at times. She's widowed at a very young age, sadly and took over her husband's wine business and supposedly

invented that disgorging process herself, which is uh. I mean, it's kind of simple when you look at it, but I wouldn't have thought to do it. No again, I mean they were decanning I'm back then and filtering it out. So and this was I think eighteen thirteen when the Widow Clicko came up with it. And about then is when Champagne the drink took off, at least in France and started to spread very quickly around the world. Yeah, Napoleon had a lot to do with that, right, I

think Napoleon did. By World War One, Winston Churchill reminded everyone we're not fighting to save just France. Boys were fighting to save Champagne. Hurrah, Um, should we take another break? I think so? All right, we're gonna talk a little bit about what the fuss is with this stuff after this? All right, So Josh the master wine maker seller master has uh walked us through the process. What a great job that would be? Yeah, I have a you know, my friend Robbie is a kind of a rock star

winemaker and NAPA. Yeah, it's pretty great. He's he's like he's living the good life. In fact, he got in touch at one point because he wanted to start a wine podcast. Uh, and we just sort of email back and forth, and it just never like he just wanted advice and stuff, not like he wanted to start one with me, because that would be, Um, what are those podcasts called when like someone's super expert and then you got a big dummy. Uh uh I can't think of anything.

That's what that would have been. Man, there was like that was just ripe for jokes. I would have been that Thomas Satan Church to his Uh. Paul Giamatti, Oh you're talking about sideways. I thought you were talking about wings for a second. I would have been like, when are we gonna drink it? Tastes good to me, yeah, and Robbie'd be spitting it out. Um. I don't think he's very talented, and you know does quite well like

making wine for other people. And he also has his own label uh linge Vane and Pearce and Meyer Wines plug plug uh. And when you go to his house and stay with him in his awesome guest house at the top of how Mountain, you get drunk on like amazing expensive wines that he opens, Like you're drinking that peria. I'm sorry, this is Pellegrina. Oh excuse me. That's the Italian version of Perrier. It is. It's like the likersecco. What spumantepumante is Italian? Is it? It's sparkling right, Yeah,

I guess prosecco is Italian as well. I just remember that from when I was a kid, Martine and ROSSI. It's amazing. That's drilled in my brain Martini and Rossie, which probably is like crap, sparkling wine, isn't it. I don't know that it's good. I don't know. I mean, I think it's I think that's probably what gave me your headache. That and all the low and brow Yeah, is that still around? I don't know. And though Bob and Doug drank now they drank some sort of was

it made up? No, they drank Molson? Well is it the bats? I mean it was probably some Canadian beer. We're gonna get killed over this. We are sorry, everybody, all right, So let's move on then to what makes champagne so so expensive and so fancy, Like it has this um there's this notion you know that you drink it for celebrations or that you're like sort of the upper crust of society. I d if you're drinking champagne. Well, supposedly, there is an actual reason why champagne is associated with

toasting the big events in life. Because for a thousand years, from about the ninth century to the nineteenth century, they had no champagne. The kings of France were coronated in champagne, so it was like a celebration town for the whole country. So toasting with even before they were sparkling wines, um, toasting with champagne wine was traditional. So have you ever been in a restaurant and like gotten good news and said, waiter, champagne, has anyone ever done that? Uh, besides in movies. I

don't know. Maybe it's funny like I was watching, Uh, I was watching McConaughey act, and it was I was watching a movie on somebody else's seat back on a flight, so I wasn't hearing it, so I was really just watching the movie. And um, I was like, I imagine if you were in real life around Matthew McConaughey, like in a room with one of his characters, and just how off putting in bizarre that experience would be. You know, because he's just said he just choose the scenery and

everything he does. It's just so big that in real life, if you were interacting with that character, you'd be like, calm down, man, you're freaking me out. Well Watterson was pretty chill. Yeah, yeah, okay, but everybody since Waterson pretty much alright, boy, that's an interesting thing to think on a plane. Just hit me, hit me on the plane. I think if I was in a restaurant and something great happened, I would say waiter, another Gen and Tonic

and they would go huh, They probably say you got it. Actually, I started calling those lime salads at my house. Nice, you're on the gin and tonic. Yeah, yeah, that usually happens around around April. Oh yeah, April two, you know, September. I got one for you. Um, gin and bitter lemon is a nice combo. Yeah yeah, And I thought bitter lemon was just like a fever tree drink that they make them. They make a good one, but everybody from like Canada dry to whoever else makes bitter lemon as well.

So just give yourself a good bitter lemon and some gin. You can't love it? Um, we should do it. But we'll definitely do a podcast on gin at some point. Very interesting liquor complex. Can be sure. I got another one for you with that better lemon. If you want to get really fancy, get some St. George Terror terroir. Yeah, I'm not a fan. You had the dry rye, now you did you? You tried the terroar one, Yeah, the one that tastes like feet. No, that's the dry rye.

I've tried all three of those St. George's and I'm like any of them. I'm a London dry guy. Well, anyway, you'll still like it with bitter lemon. All right, everyone else you would like the Tara war St George with a bitter lemon, everyone else on the planet. Because all right, and I figured out what was up with the dry rye. You're absolutely right. You can't make a martini out of that stuff. It kill you. It's not made for it. It's made for things like the gronies. It makes a

killer negroni. It's really good. Yeah, I'm a I stick to my lime salad, you know. Okay, you know me and my basic names. But try the bitter lemon sometime with gin. Okay, you're you're dry limon. It's fine, all right, okay, but with with the bitter lemon instead of tonic. Okay, I'll give it a dry And if I don't like it, then I'm just weird because everyone else in the world loves it. That I'm not saying that. You said that, Uh all right, where in the world worry? So we

were talking about, um, what makes champagne so fancy? Yeah? Uh well, like we said earlier, it's um you know, it's a very small region comparatively speaking. Uh so that will lend to the price and all these hand processes that they still might use or foot processes. It's a big one is gonna make it more expensive, and anytime the price is being driven up, uh, it's gonna have

that sort of air of sophistication. Uh. And then, of course when the hip hop scene started kind of a using that in lyrics and popping Champagne on the yacht and the videos I'm on a boat, what was that okay with? Oh? I think I remember that. I don't remember who it was, but I don't think it was got. It was one of those Andy Sandberg shorts. Not little Wayne, who's the other little little bow Wow? No, he's just wow now really yeah, grows up man, the guy who

was like, yeah, yeah, that guy. I have no idea you do little ones John? Yeah? Uh yeah, I'm not. But yes, it was a Andy Sandberg short. Yeah I do. I think I do remember that. But that definitely, um

kind of solidified the sort of you know status. Yeah, sure, that's exactly the word I would I would suggest it was already right solidified, But it definitely didn't hurt, especially in the States here and with a whole new generation of people right right, like the younger generation, it's like Champagne human, right, But then all of a sudden little John's like, I got some champagne for real. I'm sure

the champagne industry was like, seriously, keep doing it. Sure. So. The thing though, is there's um actual reason behind champagne being more expensive than your typical wine. But that doesn't mean that all champagne or all sparkling lines are like out of your price range. No. I mean you can get some cheap sparkling wine that'll get good headache. No, No, that's not true. Like you can get Shandon wines for bucks and it's not going to give you a headache.

I was talking about the six dollar good stuff. Yeah, but twenty bucks. I mean, if you're gonna spring for a decent bottle of wine if it's New Year's Eve, why not, That's when I'll toast it. Uh. Alright, So twenty bucks will get you a good bottle of decent champagne, is what you're saying. Yes, not bad. Or you can spend hundreds of dollars, thousands, tens of thousands at auction,

just like wine. If you want some super rare collectible wine, Champion apparently a quarter of a million dollars for a bottle at the Moscow Ritz Carlton, And that's not even something you drink, right, if you're a jackass, sure, but I mean, if you're you have to be a pack has to spend a quarter of a million dollars on a bottle of champagne anyway, you better drink it, frankly. But champagne you don't keep, you can you can, And

so there's a lot of misunderstanding about it. Right, So a lot of people think that you keep champagne standing up. You do for about the first month. But if you're keeping in a seller, you want to keep it on its side. Like any bottle of wine, you want the wine touching the cork. But the reason that champagne actually ages in the bottle. It's just like wine that that cork. It's in there pretty good, but it's not air tight.

There's a minimal amount of gas exchange going on, so that the wine, the champagne, continues to mature over the course of ten thirty years if you keep it. If you keep it, the key to champagne, apparently storing it is you want to avoid temperature fluctuations. You want to keep it at about the same temperature for the whole time you have it. Stored. To bury it in your backyard, sure is on its side deep and leave it there. Yeah, uh, and it will. You will find that all the worms

drank it and be like worms. Bury it under the frost line, and you want to keep it out of the sunlight too well underground. But apparently as it ages, they've never had old champagne. But as it ages, its taste starts to mellow um and it takes on dried fruit, nutty,

toasty honey notes are like the main notes that it hits. Yeah, we had a bottle of don peregnon that was awful when we opened it, but we didn't It was every improper thing you could do, we did, including moving it in a hot truck from l A to Atlanta, hot moving truck. I don't know. I mean, we just don't drink it much. So we just had it and we got it as a gift. If that happens, you just just put some fresh squeeze orange juice in there. It's fine, boom,

then you've got a mimosa. I'll have a mimosa occasionally. That's champagne, I know, in orange juice. Yeah, that's the key with the orange juice. Well, I mean, I enjoy mimosa more than just regular champagne. It's like a whole. It's definitely one of those things that's greater than the sum of parts. Yeah, you know, I don't think I

ever said, chuck that. Um. Those two quarter of a million dollar bottles of champagne were from a shipwreck that was headed to Russia to bring champagne to the tsar's family, and it's all the shipwrecked and they discovered it in the nineties and now they're selling it at the Ritz Carlton too. What did you say? And I think that's the one that's like a collector's piece, right, I don't know you like to put it on your wall. That's

not from what I I don't know. I don't know what you do with that besides just drink it and hope for the best. Well, should we talk about drinking it in the proper way, to open it in, to pour it, consume it, because uh, if you if you don't know what you're doing and you've seen too many movies, you might try and pop that cork out across the room. It's very dangerous. It is very dangerous and people get injured. Right, are there deaths. I think I didn't see it, or

is that like an urban legend. I would guess an urban legend. I could be wrong. I'm thinking if you died from getting hit with a cork, you had a pre existing condition. M Is that covered? I don't know under Obamacare. Sure, I guess we'll see. So. Uh, you'll get about six flutes if you're pouring properly out of a bottle of champagne. I want to serve it between forty and forty five degrees celsius or fahrenheit. That's fahrenheit, right,

I don't know. Uh. If you are caught with your pants down at a party, just go champagne and it'll get you out of it. Um. And you want to chill it very quickly, you can put it in an ice bath and not to get out that yeast plug, but just to make it cold fast, just like you would beer or something. All Right, the neck, you mean, no, no, no, the whole bottle. If you want to serve it. You got a hot bottle of champagne and you're moving truck, throw it in an ice bath for about twenty minutes

and you should be good to go. Yeah, if you there's a party trick. You can do too, where if you put just the neck in the ice bath, you can use what's called a saber. You can actually use anything. I've seen somebody do it on on video with a shoe. Yeah. You don't even have to freeze it if you're a good saber or yeah, but you you kind of want to. You want the neck very very cold because you want the glass to just crack off cleanly. Yeah. And what

the deal is, if you've ever seen someone, it's called sabridge. Um. We mentioned earlier that the champagne bottle is very thick because it's in there at about nine p s I where the scene meets the lip, it's about less glass and so that's a vulnerable area. And that's what makes sabering possible. And so you use well, like you said, you could use a shoe. I guess if you're you know, if you're that guy, right, But there's traditional sabers there there.

They look like a little sword. They are a little sword. They just aren't ground to a point or an edge. They're very blunt. Well, because the point is using blunt force on a weak point of the of the neck of the bottle. Yeah, but you can use your like a saber can be sharp. You just use the other side of it, Okay, alright, and um, I mean it's it's pretty neat to do because you're not like I think for a while I thought you were just knocking the cork out. That's what I thought as well. But

you're you're you're knocking the glass off. Yeah, the top the top lip of the of the bottle is coming clean off if you're doing it correctly, and it's it's that is also dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, because that thing will fly or more. Yeah, and that's actual glass. What you want to do is have a sharp shooter handy to shoot it out of the sky before it hurts anybody, that's right, and have everyone staying

behind you. That's the traditional way. Um, how you really open it is and this is a uh even if you're not just popping the cork, you might like twist the cork off. You want to twist the bottle. That's sort of the number one rule to open it cleanly and non dangerously and without why champagne, you know, getting all over the place, like when you open an a

tonic bottle. Her soda, anything fizzy. That's one of our traditions backstage at Stuff You Should Know shows is Josh opens a tonic bottles everywhere and you go, what's the deal every single time? Um, I think because I have so many lime salads and just I know, you gotta go easy with those tonic bottles. I do. And it's still spray me. It's it's almost comical. Um No, it's

pretty funny. Um. So you're twisting the bottle. Uh, if you have a towel, you can hold it over the cork, but you really don't need it as long as you're kind of holding it with your hand and twist that bottle. Put your thumb in the punt as they call it, which is that the area the bottom of the bottle, the div it. Yeah, the punt the concave part of the punt. Sure, let's put your thumb in the punt um. And then you've got it open and you tilt the glass importance a little bit for a little bit more.

You want about three quarters of a flute and uh, put your pinkie up and go to town. Yeah, And I did a brain stuff on what the best kind of glass for champagne is and apparently the tulip is it's a combination between the coupe and the flute um. You've probably seen it before. No, I didn't see that one. It's I know, the tulip class tulips um. But apparently they allow for the most sparkle and if you if you have the so the bubbles coming up the French

call effervescence. And if you look at a glass of champagne that you're just holding there in front of you, when they bubble up to the top, they accumulate into a foam and uh, that is called moose like shock a lot moose, remember top secret. Oh yeah, but it's not that. It's just moose is what they call. Or foam is another way to put it. That's what they

call it. And so actually when you're creating the um second fermentation process of the champagne making what the the method champagne was, it's called um the prize demuse or the foam creation. Wow, that's why you poured slow too, because if you get too fast, it's gonna get everywhere like your tonic. And then you pour it three quarters full and you toast and say huzzah, huzza huzzah, I think is the traditional thing you're supposed to say. So

you like Champagne, yet it's just not for me. That's fine, don't feel bad for me. I want then, uh if you want to know more about Champagne, go get you some. And in the meantime, you can type that word in the search part how stuff works dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mayo. Alright, I'm gonna call this one. Uh well, getting the nomenclature corect something we always strive to do and don't always do. Hey, guys, let me start by saying, you've been listening to your

show for two years. That add so much joy, laughter, and knowledge to my life. Now. You're always intentional and sensitive about the language you used on your show. And while listening to the MS episode, I noticed something I've heard you two say in the past. I work in suicide prevention and hope to change the culture and reduce the stigma around suicide. As you know, one of the first steps of doing that is examining the language we use.

The phrase commit suicide. It's very common, of course, and has been used for a very long time. However, the work commit makes it sound criminal. This perpetuates a stigma that there's something bad or wrong with someone who's experiencing thoughts of suicide, making it less likely that they will reach out and ask for help. I want to encourage you guys to use the word died by suicide or completed suicide as an alternative and more factual term. UH

the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. It's great resource for more information. And of course I need to plug my own nonprofit. I work for not my kid dot org. I appreciate everything you guys do. Please come to Phoenix. I guarantee you will sell out a show there. Sincerely that as Sarah Tisden a k A hope dealer. Oh wow, dealing hope. That's a heck of a k. Yeah, and you know what, I never thought about that, But that is not true. It's not true. You have because we've

been called out on this before. Really yes, but I think we've been done a listener mail on it before. But it's so ingrained. I know, to say commit and then complete. It just sounds like they finished their homework or something like that, but died by suicide. I could I can get behind that. I will try, but it's just so hard to not say committed. What though, if you're saying if it hasn't happened, you're saying someone was going to attempt thinking attempting suicide. Okay, yeah, I think

that one's kosher. All right, man, I didn't know we've covered this, so I feel bad that I still haven't gotten over that. Then yeah, same here, All right, I'm gonna work on it. Yeah, same here. Thanks for calling us out, Hope dealer, appreciate that. Thanks Sarah, keep dealing that, Hope. Open up your trench, come and be like this is what I got right. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us to correct us, prod us whatever, um lay it on us, send us an email to

stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.