Enobytes Wine Blog

What is a Nebuchadnezzar?

• An airtight vessel used in the fermentation process
• The largest bottle of champagne available
• A Persian cat

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What is the House of Jacquesson?

• The board that approves bubble allotment
• One of the oldest independent champagne houses
• That New York nightclub that plays house music on Tuesdays

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The first shallow champagne glass originated by forming wax molds of Marie Antoinette’s breasts.

• True
• False

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How many bubbles are in a bottle of champagne?

• 50,000
• 50 Million
• 50 Gazillion

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Click on “read the rest of this entry” to see the answers.

A Nebuchadnezzar is the largest bottle of champagne available

The House of Jacquesson is one of the oldest independent champagne houses

The first shallow champagne glass originated by forming wax molds of Marie Antoinette’s breasts. True or False??? Read the comments below…

There are approximately 50 million bubbles in a bottle of Champagne.

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8 Responses to “Wine Trivia - Champagne!”

1. Christophe - Titus Vineyards Says:
   June 6th, 2008 at 9:07 am

   That was fun! More quizzes please

   It is always the right time for bubbles. I was just at Chandon’s Auction Napa Valley Bubbles kick off party last night. All bubbles + all night = more fun than six flags.

2. Matt Says:
   June 6th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

   wow, I was shocked at the third answer! …and yes, more quizzes - this is fun!

3. enobytes Says:
   June 6th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

   That sounds like a lot of fun Christophe. We’ll have to attend next years event - I hear tickets sell out fast!

4. Liz Says:
   June 7th, 2008 at 10:24 am

   Fun quiz! Christophe, I too was there at Chandon. I always love to see a bottle sabred.

5. Stephen Says:
   June 7th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

   The third answer is wrong. The Champagne coupe was designed in England, as were all high quality blown glass items in that time, and the first recorded sales of these glasses preceeded Marie Antoinette’s birth by about 50 years. So, the correct answer is false. Please check your facts.

6. Stephen Says:
   June 7th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

   By the way, Jacquesson was founded in 1798 while Gosset was founded in 1584, albeit as a still wine producer initially. I’m unsure as well what you mean by oldest ‘independent’ Champagne House. Jacquesson and Taittinger, which was founded in 1772, are both companies with less than 50% outside investors. Taittinger is still controlled by the family after briefly losing it to Starwood in 2005 in a hostile takeover. So Taittinger is actually the older ‘independent’ Champagne House.

7. enobytes Says:
   June 8th, 2008 at 12:06 am

   Ok, so I’ll change the answer to “true” or “false” depending on what you perceive as accurate. I’m a sap for believing the legend! And for kicks, read the following Winespectator forum post on the subject: http://forums.winespectator.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6826053161/m/332103364

   But seriously, I think Tony Perrottet’s article, “The Champagne Glass and the Breast” seems to put it all into perspective:

   “In the Middle Ages, love-besotted French king Henry II had his wine cups fashioned on the “apple-like” breasts of Diane de Poitiers. And in the late 1700s, the legend sprang up that Queen Marie-Antoinette’s breasts were the model for the shallow, broad-rimmed champagne coupes that are still often used today. (Although the modern fashion is more for the tall, thin and very un-breast-like champagne flutes).

   There is no evidence at all that this is true of Marie-Antoinette, although the Queen did have a passion for bubbly. If nothing else, her ample figure, admired by her letch of a father-in-law King Louis XV and others, would have provided a higher-volume glass than the shallow coupes. But the royal breast-stemware connection may have begun with another, slightly more plausible story: Marie-Antoinette definitely did have a set of breast-shaped porcelain milk bowls created for her by the French porcelain factory, Sèvres – and tradition holds that they were modeled on her own. Known as the jattes tetons, the creamy white gourds balance on a tripod base that is decorated with carved goat’s heads. Marie-Antoinette was a devotee of the “back-to-Nature” movement that brought breast-feeding back into fashion in France, and she had ordered the cups for use at her fairy-tale dairy Rambouillet, where the queen liked to dress up as a shepherdess and frolic with her children and ladies-in-waiting. The shamefully expensive service was delivered during the troubled year of 1788, the year before the Revolution exploded.

   If the story is true, the cast of the Queen’s breast would probably have been made from wax under the control of one Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, the factory’s co-artistic director. The four original bowls survive in the Musée National de Céramique de Sèvres in Paris, and the porcelain company still makes reproductions for connoisseurs”.

   Regarding the oldest independent Champagne houses – I believe Taittinger was the third oldest Champagne house. I stand corrected if I was wrong; isn’t Jacquesson is the oldest? http://www.thewinedoctor.com/champagne/jacquesson.shtml

8. enobytes Says:
   June 8th, 2008 at 11:24 am

   I received a Champagne history lesson coming from one of our readers/contributors and I stand corrected – Jacquesson is not “the” oldest independent champagne house. Yes, it is “one” of the oldest, but not the oldest. This information is coming from someone who has worked with Champagne for the last ten years, and a MW that teaches at the University of Champagne, Reims, so and I trust their information over mine!

   “Gosset is the oldest (1584), Ruinart (1729) is the second oldest and Taittinger (1734) is the third oldest. Moet (1743) and Clicquot (1772) which are considered second wave Champagne houses are older than Jacquesson which was founded as recently as 1798.”

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