Food & Drink · 2
Once monks started sealing wine bottles with cork, what unintended gas buildup created champagne's fizz and occasional exploding bottles?
Answer
Carbon dioxide from trapped fermentation
When cork sealed bottles too tightly, the carbon dioxide naturally produced during fermentation had nowhere to escape, building pressure that later became prized as champagne's fizz.
💡 Did you know?
Champagne's signature pop was an accidental discovery—monks sealed bottles with cork, creating pressure that wasn't intended initially.
Other options people guess
- Nitrogen released from the grape skins
- Oxygen absorbed through the cork
- Sulfur dioxide from aging barrels
Topics
- champagne
- fermentation
- history
- chemistry
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