The secret to champagne’s appeal is the physics of bubbles | Hacker News Reader

The secret to champagne’s appeal is the physics of bubbles

arstechnica.com

29 pointsTomte16 comments

Sparking wine pairs really well with a wide range of foods. Most other wine has a narrower pairing ability. Check out https://www.google.com/amp/s/winefolly.com/tutorial/getting-... for a great illustrated guide on this.

This is all of course subject to taste but I find Wine Folly’s suggestions mostly on point. I am in no way affiliated with it, except as a reader.

Don't like champagne, maybe the "secret" is effective marketing?

You don't like it. Countless others do.

Marketing is more the case with sugared water (ie.e. sodas, that actually spends billions in advertising each year), than with champagne, which is not a single-brand product but tons of different producers, and that was popular way before modern mass marketing was a thing.

People seldom get to even see champagne commercials except in posh magazines or during the holidays. Contrast with sodas, beer, and co.

No marketing needs to be involved, except to promote this or that particular brand of champagne, and that only in the last century.

"Champagne" is actually a brand, it just belongs to a region (of France) instead of a company.

> EU law and the laws of most countries reserve the term "Champagne" exclusively for wines that come from this region

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_(wine_region)

It seems strange to call a place of origin a "brand". Is "Ameican" as in (for instance) "American car" a "brand"?

You're right, it's not a brand, the correct term is appellation.

That's nominally (and not a brand, a "Protected Designation of Origin").

We still (in Europe) call champagne anything that's a champagne in nature, regardless of origin, even if its maker can't say so on the label.

(The same way perhaps one would say "xerox" even if the machine is from another maker).

You use the word "countless" in a context that is not familiar to me

"People seldom get to even see champagne commercials"

10 seconds of googling: https://productplacementblog.com/tag/champagnes-and-sparklin...

Product placement and commercials are different things - if we're counting product placement, champagne would be less than a drop in the sea of scenes with people consuming soda on TV.

There's a lot of different wines that go under the champagne moniker because that denominates the origin region.

Sugar content vary wildly between labels and with that the taste. A lot of people whom don't like wine do like champagne because of the sugar overwhelming much of the other acid tones, and call it "fruity".

Also tannis contents vary a lot between bottles which can cause varying reaction to taste and enjoyment, up and including migraine.

With all that I mean there's a chance that a champagne/wine of your liking is out there but it's hard to find because labels prefer to talk about flavors and notes instead of giving out useful information

I don’t know. It’s not really a fad.

I love it. Champagne pairs well with shell fish and in particular with raw oysters. However, bad champagne (bubbly in general) or flat champagne is not very enjoyable. You don’t need to spend a lot but cheap stuff that’s too sweet (and isn’t Demi Sec) is pretty awful. There’s a true craft to making good bubbles.

I used to love the stuff, now it gives me terrible acid indigestion and I don't care for the taste anymore either.

Each to their own I guess, but I agree that "universal appeal" is overblown.

This is the same thing that makes lattes tasty. The microfoam affects the way flavors are perceived in part due to a textural difference which affects how flavors are absorbed.

Foams are a fascinating and not very well understood phase of matter. We only recently started developing mathematical models that can approximate predictions about some kinds of foams, but most of what we know about them just comes from observation. Foams are everywhere, and yet we know relatively little about them.

I've heard that one of the things that makes champagne appealing is its lithium content, but that may just be false attribution.

That doesn’t sound right to me. I know several people who take lithium to stabilize their bipolar disorder and none of them find it addictive or appealing, it’s just a daily pill they have to choke down.

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