the library

Champagne

Spirits & brews· spirit

What it is

Champagne is a sparkling wine made in the Champagne region of France by a second fermentation inside the bottle.

What it tastes like

On the nose: sweet, umami, acid, bitter.

Every one of its 10 compounds carries a paper the library can cite.

• glycinetasteacidreads as sweetMeasured in 1 of 341 ingredients.cite

  1.1 to 4.0 mg per 100 mL — one of only four free amino acids measurable in every one of the eighteen champagnes — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1, the Gly column, across champagne rows C01 to C18)
• L-alaninetasteacidreads as sweetMeasured in 3 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.9 to 18.4 mg per 100 mL — a twentyfold spread across the eighteen champagnes, the widest of any amino acid measured, and the largest of the sweet-tasting group — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1, the Ala column, across champagne rows C01 to C18)
• L-serinetasteacidreads as sweetMeasured in 3 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.6 to 3.9 mg per 100 mL where detected — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1, the Ser column, across champagne rows C01 to C18)
• L-aspartic acidtasteacidreads as sourMeasured in 9 of 341 ingredients.cite

  1.4 to 10.6 mg per 100 mL. With glutamate it is one of the two umami-tasting free amino acids; the paper's oyster comparison measures aspartate in the two oyster species at 206.1 and 55.3 mg per 100 g of the solid part, twenty to fifty times a champagne's level. — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1, the Asp column, across champagne rows C01 to C18)
• L-lysinetasteacidreads as sweet, bitterMeasured in 1 of 341 ingredients.cite

  1.7 to 9.1 mg per 100 mL, and one of only four free amino acids measurable in every one of the eighteen champagnes, with proline, glycine and alanine — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1, the Lys column, across champagne rows C01 to C18)
• L-leucinetasteacidreads as bitterMeasured in 3 of 341 ingredients.cite

  1.2 to 5.6 mg per 100 mL, one of the bitter-tasting group in the paper's own classification — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1, the Leu column, across champagne rows C01 to C18)
• L-methioninetasteacidreads as sulfurousMeasured in 1 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.3 to 7.0 mg per 100 mL where detected, and absent from two of the eighteen champagnes — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1, the Met column, across champagne rows C01 to C18)
• phenylalaninetasteacidreads as bitterMeasured in 2 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.5 to 3.8 mg per 100 mL where detected; total free amino acids across the same eighteen champagnes run from 21 to 106 mg per 100 mL, a fivefold spread inside one appellation — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1, the Phe column, across champagne rows C01 to C18)
• L-glutamic acidtasteacidreads as umami, sourMeasured in 7 of 341 ingredients.cite

  1.4 to 7.5 mg per 100 mL, and not detected at all in the lowest-ranked bottle. This is the compound the study is built on: free glutamate is the umami stimulus, and the paper's thesis is that champagne supplies it while oysters supply the 5'-nucleotides that act synergistically with it at the receptor. — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1, the Glu column, across champagne rows C01 to C18 — the column by which the table is sorted)
• L-prolinetasteacidreads as sweetMeasured in 3 of 341 ingredients.cite

  15.0 to 50.7 mg per 100 mL — the largest free amino acid in every one of the eighteen champagnes, and by the paper's own taste classification a neutral one rather than a sweet, bitter or umami contributor — Schmidt et al. 2020, Scientific Reports (Table 1 (Mean values of free amino acids in champagnes and sparkling wine, in mg/100 mL), the Pro column, across champagne rows C01 to C18)