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Sparkling Wine

Sparkling wine, also known as champagne if it was produced in the Champagne region of France, is a lightly carbonated white wine. The carbonation can happen naturally during fermentation if done in a pressurized tub, or CO2 can be injected into the finished wine before bottling it. Dom Perignon, a Benedictine monk is credited with creating champagne, but he was actually trying to get rid of the bubbles.

Sparkling wine builds up pressure when it is bottled. Wine can become carbonated naturally and easily, and was actually considered a bad characteristic of wine. In ancient Greece they attributed the bubbles to the cycles of the moon because they were entirely misunderstood. Bottled wine, if shaken could create enough pressure to burst their bottle, possibly causing a chain reaction that can burst all the bottles in a cellar. Wine cellar workers wore heavy iron face masks to protect them from a bursting glass.

Sparkling wine was made naturally, and was actually first purposely made in Britain, not Champagne, France where it would occur naturally but still undesired. The discover that any wine could be made into sparkling wine with the addition of extra sugar right before it was bottled led to the understanding of effervescence and CO2 gas.

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