Debunked: Spoon in the champagne

[Mick West]

I don't usually bother with old-wives tales, but this debunking was rather amusing, and a friend of mine is a big champagne fan:

http://news.stanford.edu/pr/94/941221Arc4008.html

However, after their study was completed, McGee learned of a French study that seems to confirm their results, conducted under the auspices of the Centre Interprofesionel des Vins de Champagne. French science journalist Hervé This-Benckhard told McGee by e-mail: "I think we can affirm now that a spoon, made of silver or stainless steel or of aluminum, has no effect on what the French term 'éventage,' or the loss of gas."

Particularly interesting was the finding that simply leaving the bottle open in the fridge overnight was found to better (or at least as good) as re-corking the bottle. It might even be better!

Leaving the bottle open and untreated worked better than hanging a spoon inside. In fact, the two bottles left open in the refrigerator for 26 hours averaged a higher score than any other treatment - including just-opened champagne.

The experiments took a toll on the participants:

Another complication might be the state of the observers by the time a glass of champagne had been sipped - in some cases more than sipped - from each of 10 bottles. As research scientists, several members of the team noticed what Zare called "fatigue of the instrumentation." The instruments - themselves - were progressively less able to distinguish among the wines.

"Our palates were not as fine as at the beginning. Eventually we didn't feel quite right about letters and numbers," McGee recalled.

"You hear of the observer influencing the observed, but not often the observed influencing the observer," McGee said. "I think we have a reverse Heisenberg principle here."


One team member, law Professor Greely, had a philosophical disagreement with a test that used bubbles as the mark of quality. "I am unable to disaggregate the gestalt of the wine," he declared, setting down his scorecard.

The study was also repeated on Mythbusters:

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