Champagne, September 29: bubbles are not just the photogenic companion to a bottle’s opening pop, they also enhance the drink’s flavour, scientists say.
A group of European researchers say they have proven champagne’s fizz – actually scores of chemical eruptions – help unleash the drink’s distinctive taste.
According to the team, a bottle, when poured, leads to the formation of scores of carbon dioxide bubbles, aroma-rich compounds that travel upward toward the top of the glass, exploding on the surface into a burst of aerosol borne flavour.
Using a mass spectrometer and slow motion photography, the group, led by Gerard Liger-Belair of the University of Reims, viewed the process in minute detail, presenting their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
Inspiration for the study came from an unlikely source, the sea.
“From a conceptual point of view, the situation found in glasses poured with champagne or sparkling wine is quite similar” to that on the surface of the sea, the study said.
In the same way that marine aerosols enrich the area around the sea’s surface, scientists believe champagne aerosols deliver aromas lift-like to the surface and to the nose.
And with one 0.75 litre bottle capable of creating 100 million bubbles, there should be plenty of opportunity for taste.
—Agencies