Selects: How Champagne Works

Sure we can all agree that champagne is probably the greatest thing humans have or ever will invent, but how much do we understand how it's made? Learn all about it in this classic episode.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's select,
I've chosen our two thousand seventeen episode, How Champagne Works.
It's a charming little episode that fair warning will almost
certainly make you want a glass of champagne, unless you're Chuck,
though I suspect he secretly did too. Enjoy Welcome to

(00:24):
Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, Pierre Clark. There's
Charles Jacques Ryant. Jerry. Oh nice rolling. Are we allowed

(00:47):
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

(01:08):
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.

(01:30):
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

(01:56):
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.

(02:17):
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.

(02:42):
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

(03:05):
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,

(03:27):
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

(03:50):
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.

(04:13):
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

(04:36):
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,

(05:01):
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

(05:26):
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

(05:47):
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.

(06:13):
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

(06:36):
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

(06:57):
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

(07:18):
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

(07:40):
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

(08:02):
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

(08:23):
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

(08:43):
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

(09:06):
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,

(09:27):
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

(09:50):
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

(10:14):
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,

(10:36):
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

(10:59):
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

(11:20):
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

(11:41):
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,

(12:06):
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

(12:28):
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

(12:49):
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

(13:12):
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

(13:35):
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,

(13:55):
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

(14:17):
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

(14:39):
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,

(15:28):
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,

(15:51):
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

(16:13):
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.

(16:34):
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

(16:55):
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

(17:19):
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,

(17:42):
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

(18:02):
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

(18:25):
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.

(18:47):
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,

(19:08):
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

(19:31):
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

(19:53):
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,

(20:15):
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

(20:39):
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

(20:59):
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

(21:20):
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

(21:42):
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,

(22:03):
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,

(22:25):
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

(22:47):
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,

(23:09):
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

(23:31):
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

(23:51):
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

(24:12):
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

(24:35):
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

(24:58):
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.

(25:19):
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

(25:43):
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

(26:07):
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.

(26:27):
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

(26:48):
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

(27:10):
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

(27:30):
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

(27:50):
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,

(28:13):
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,

(28:34):
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

(28:56):
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

(29:18):
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

(29:38):
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

(30:01):
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

(30:25):
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

(30:46):
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

(31:07):
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

(31:28):
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

(31:48):
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

(32:09):
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

(32:29):
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.

(32:50):
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.

(33:13):
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

(33:34):
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

(33:59):
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

(34:21):
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

(34:44):
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

(35:05):
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

(35:26):
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

(35:47):
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

(36:08):
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.

(36:29):
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,

(36:53):
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,

(37:15):
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?

(38:05):
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

(38:26):
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.

(38:50):
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

(39:12):
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

(39:34):
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,

(39:55):
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,

(40:16):
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

(40:38):
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,

(41:02):
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,

(41:26):
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,

(41:48):
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

(42:11):
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

(42:33):
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,

(42:53):
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

(43:15):
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

(43:40):
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

(44:00):
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

(44:20):
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,

(44:40):
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

(45:04):
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

(45:26):
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

(45:49):
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.

(46:10):
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

(46:34):
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

(46:56):
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,

(47:17):
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

(47:37):
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

(47:58):
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

(48:19):
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

(48:41):
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

(49:02):
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

(49:25):
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.

(49:47):
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

(50:09):
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

(50:29):
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,

(50:53):
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

(51:14):
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

(51:36):
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,

(51:57):
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.

(52:18):
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

(52:40):
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.

(53:01):
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

(53:23):
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

(53:43):
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

(54:04):
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

(54:27):
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.

(54:51):
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,

(55:13):
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

(55:34):
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

(55:57):
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

(56:19):
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,

(56:40):
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,

(57:05):
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

(57:26):
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

(57:48):
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

(58:10):
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.

(58:31):
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

(58:55):
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

(59:16):
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.