“effervescience”, the science of Champagne

Champagne, thanks to its bubbles, is a market of 300 million bottles sold in the world and nearly 3 billion euros turnover per year,.

But how do the bubbles appear and how do they grow up? how do they contribute to the savour and to the gustatory and the visual originality of Champagne? It is the question which Gerard Liger- Belair, researcher in the « laboratoire d’œnologie de l’université de Reims » is trying to answer since 10 years.

Gerald Liger-Belair wanted to be an oceanographer. But an accident of diving diverted him from his initial vocation.

One day whereas he had sat at the terrace of a café in Reims, he observed the formation of the bubbles in a beer glass. Intrigued and curious, that gave him desire for trying an immersion in the drinks effervescent, and as he lived in Reims, he decided to take advantage of this opportunitie to explore the most prestigious among them: champagne.

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He started by photographing with a macroscopic lens, during long hours, the bubbles through a glass of champagne.

Today researcher at the university of Reims, he watch them growing up with high-speed cameras, he illuminate them with a laser in order to observe and to describe their evolutions and the agitation which they cause in a glass of champagne.

Gerard Liger Belair is a scientist and also a hedonist. He takes as much pleasure to look during hours the bubbles to grow up and evolve in the glass of Champagne, testifies its very beautiful photographic work, that to understand the physics and the chemistry of this phenomenon.

He is the first one to have described the birth of the bubbles due to the presence of impurities stuck on the the glass and particularly in cellulose fibres which are very abundant in our environment.

He described the formation of the champagnes bubbles inside these fibres, how they grow up and climb up to the surface, perfectly aligned one behind the other. He is studying, with the help of his collaborators, the effect of the bursting of champagne bubbles on the release of flavours.

its recent collaboration with professor Guillaume Polidori, and the use of the tomography of laser, enabled to prove that the movement of vorticity of the bubbles in the glass, produce a mixture of the liquid, which help to the release of flavours. According to Guillaume Polidori and Gerard Liger Belair, these studies on the dynamics of the champagne bubbles are very promising.

He is currently exploring the chemical composition of gases released on the surface of this wine and in particular of the organoleptic compounds at the origin of its flavours. He collaborates with a chemistry laboratory in Germany which is equipped with one of the most powerful chromatographs in the world. It enable to analyze, simultaneously, the chemical composition of thousands of elements contained in a gas.

The scientifics researchs of Gérard Liger-Belair and his teams are supported by the famous Champagne producer, Pommery.

Piece of knowledge :

-A bottle of champagne contains 100 million bubbles potentially.

- The bubbles are primarily made up of carbonic gas. A bottle of champagne contains 5 liters of CO2

- Under the pressure of gas, a champagne cork is ejected at 50 to 60 km/h.

- Champagne into a tall champagne glass releases the gas which it contains into 5 to 8 hours.

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