Think of Champagne and what comes to mind? The Great Gatsby? New Year’s Eve? Formula 1? What about cider?
Cider and Champagne may seem far cries from one another, but there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the relationship between the two. In fact a lot of what works to bring Champagne’s vivacious fizz to life was used on Cider first, to the point where Champagne may not be the drink it is today without the existence of Cider.
Don’t believe me? Well, let’s go on a little history lesson, shall we?
Before there was Champagne there was Méthode Ancestrale, the name given to pétillant-naturel style sparkling drinks. Ancestral because it’s a method of carbonating drinks that predates traditional methods and, unlike most methods of carbonating cider today, involves only one fermentation.
This simplified form of sparkling wine is often traced back to 1531 Limoux, France. The monks who were cultivating vineyards at the time supposedly discovered that by bottling their wine ever so slightly earlier than usual the last of the carbon dioxide would become trapped in the bottle, causing a soft, foamy fizz.
Now you’d be right to point out that this was a method used in winemaking, not cider making. But there is no such thing as original thought, and it’s important to know which sparkling methods were already in use during the sixteenth century before we go onto some rather exciting sparkling cider history.
Now if you’ve ever opened a bottle of sparkling wine or cider you’ll have felt the force of the vast amount of pressure there is once you start to remove the cork. This pressure is the same amount—5-6 atmospheres to be precise—as can be found in the tire of a double decker bus and is crucial to keeping the drink fizzy.
In order to house this pressure safely and without explosions the glass of a champagne bottle needs to be incredibly strong, but that wasn’t always the case. In the early days of glass production glass was incredibly flimsy and a lot of drinks—if they were mistakenly bottled before the fermentation had finished—would explode the glass once their fermentation picked back up again.
This was especially the case with the Champagne region of France. At the time Champagne was a still, pretty unimpressive wine that was frequently exported into the UK. During the winter fermentation would stop due to the cold and wine would be packaged and sent over to England where, in the spring as things warmed up, bottles would begin to pop in more ways than one.
Rachel Hendry
Rachel Hendry
Rachel Hendry
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