French Culture - Historical Champagne and Wine Trivia

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Advanced Placement Modern European History

- Advanced Placement European History -
French Culture

Historical Champagne and Wine Trivia

The lore and trivia that surround Champagne and wine are fascinating.
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Flag of France

A la francaise

The original Champagne coupe (or saucer-shaped glass) was fashioned by a porcelain maker in Sevres, France, from a mold made off Marie Antoinette's breast.

Until 1850, all French Champagne was sweet.

There are approximately 58 million bubbles in one bottle of Champagne.

The pressure in a bottle of Champagne is 90 pounds per square inch, about three times that in your auto tire.

Marie Antoinette

Because Cognac is aged in wood, more than 19 million bottles of Cognac evaporate into the air each year over Cognac, France.

France produces one-fifth of all the wine made in the world.

Far more Merlot than Cabernet Sauvignon (nearly a 2-to-1 ratio) is planted throughout Bordeaux, although we call Cabernet Sauvignon "the Bordeaux grape."

France is the major importer of port (the French take 40 percent of all port produced), and there it is used as an aperitif.

The average American drinks about one-tenth the wine the average Frenchman drinks.

All'Italia

Forty percent of Italy is mountainous. Another 40 percent is hilly. Grape vines are planted in all of Italy's 20 provinces. That is why the country, which is 25 percent smaller than the state of California, produces one-fifth of all the wine made in the world.

Nearly half of the wine imported into the United States is Italian (one-quarter is French).

USA

There were more wineries in the United States before Prohibition than there were a dozen years ago (more than 700 in 1920 vs. about 600 in 1988).

Commercial wine is made in 48 of the 50 United States.

Ninety percent of all American wine is made in California (8 percent is made in New York).

Together, Napa and Sonoma counties produce only 9 percent of all California wine.

The wineries of Ernest & Julio Gallo make as much wine in six minutes as does Chateau Petrus in one year.

Twenty-five percent of the British drink four times as much Champagne each year as does the entire population of the US.

Miscellaneous Wine Trivia

Wine corks contain 40 million nitrogen-filled cells per cubic centimeter. A cork can be compressed to half its size and recover its original dimensions within hours.

All the essential vitamins are found in a glass of wine.

Ninety-five percent of all the wine made each year is consumed before the next harvest.

Antarctica is the only continent on Earth on which wine is not produced.

There is no commercial winery in Tibet.

As a group, Russia, Georgia and Ukraine are the fourth-largest producer of wine in the world.

The sixth-largest European wine producer is Romania (after Italy, France, Spain, Russia and Germany).

More Cognac is consumed in Hong Kong than any city in the world.

Above stats compiled in May 2001.

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