The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Food
Fizzy
 spoon in champagne bottle




Date: Mon, 26 Sep 1994 19:14:43 -0400
From: Lee Rudolph <rudolph@cis.umassd.edu>
Subject: Re: Teaspoon in Champ bottle declared legendary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban

Dear Terry and Jason,

Just in case either or both of you miss this post from the estimable Jean_Louis_Brodu@Email.FranceNet.fr, it looks like the definitive word on spoons and champagne. (I grepped the FAQ for those two words and didn't find them.) This certainly belongs at cathouse, in any case.

Lee

-----begin quoted post from Jean Louis Brodu-----

> I have good news for the inquiring minds who raised the topic. The
>practice of inserting a teaspoon in an open champagne bottle to prevent the
>wine going flat has been scientifically tested. According to the French
>newspaper "The Republican Lorrain" (17 March 1987), the Interprofessionnal
>Committee of the Wine of Champagne undertook an experiment to ascertain the
>legendary efficiency of this practice. The experience has been realized with
>six bottles of the same wine drawn off from the same vat. Results were
>measured with an "aphrometer", a device used to determine the pressure of
>carbonic gas in solution. Two glasses have been served from each of the six
>bottles and the pressure has been measured immediately afterward. Two
>bottles have been shut with an hermetic cork, a teaspoon has been inserted in
>the neck of two other bottles and two bottles have remained opened. The six
>bottles have been left during 24 hours in a refrigerator at 11 degrees
>centigrade. Then, the pressures have been measured again. And a glass has
>been poured from each bottle which were replaced during 24 hours in the
>fridge in the same conditions. Then, the measure of pressures has been
>undertaken a third time. While initial pressures were identical in the six
>bottles, all decreased during the second and third measure. Nevertheless,
>bottles closed hermetically preserved a noticeable pressure while the two
>bottles closed with a teaspoon or left open, lost a great part of their
>initial pressure. Without any clue proving that the teaspoon had any effect.
>The Committee of the wine of Champagne has therefore concluded that the only
>way to avoid the "degassing" of this precious wine in an opened bottle is to
>drink it entirely or, if this is not possible, to seal it with an hermetic
>cork. The efficiency of the inserted teaspoon is therefore a legend.
> To verify the accuracy of these informations, I phoned the
>Interprofessionnel Committee of the Wine of Champagne in Epernay. My person
>who answered seemed quite surprised and a bit annoyed that this rather
>surrealist test has been leaked to the press. The test had really taken place
>and ended with the said conclusions. It would be fun to trace back the origin
>of this legendary practice. I have the hunch that placing a teaspoon in the
>bottleneck of a bottle could well have been at first a primitive form of
>breathalyzer. That is, if you are able to do it without too many tries, it
>means that you are not that drunk after all. But how this test of drunkenness
>would have been transformed into an habit aiming at preserving bubbles in
>champagne is another "drying" question for those researching the folklore of
>alcoholism.

>A votre bonne sante !

>Jean-Louis "never twice in the same glass" Brodu



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