ABSTRACT
Champagne tasting may be seen as the pinnacle of glamour and frivolity to most people, but it should also be considered as a fantastic opportunity for physicists to explore the subtle science of everyday life. Champagne and sparkling wines elaborated through the same traditional method are under a high pressure of carbon dioxide (CO2) close to 5–6 bars. During the cork popping process, a plume mainly composed of gas-phase CO2 freely expands out of the bottleneck through ambient air. The concentration of dissolved CO2 in champagne and sparkling wines is the real key to the production of bubbles. One method involved pouring champagne straight down the middle of a vertically oriented flute. The other one involved pouring champagne down the side of a tilted flute. The photographs show the beauty of the flow patterns found in champagne glasses. A collection of several two-dimensional vortices, which formed at the air/champagne interface, were captured through long-exposure photography.
