On the way home from our recent day-excursion to the Champagne region, with not a single bottle of champagne in hand, I wondered what would happen if I took an ordinary white wine and charged it up with N2O (nitrous oxide) in my iSi Whip cream canister. Wouldn't it be great if we could get some sort of blanc de blanc (bubbly wine) out of it? Let's give it a try, I said with total enthusiasm. What do you think might have happened?
It starts off promising. And then the fizz disappears with such rapidity that it's almost scorning me, "What were you thinking? Did you really believe you'd get a sustaining bubble out of me? It's taken centuries to develop a perfect méthode champagnoise (champagne method) that requires not just one but two fermentation steps and several months of stockage..., and you want to do it in a matter of a few hours and with two cartridges of pressurized nitrous oxide*? Ha."
(* nitrous oxide = commonly known as laughing gas)
Take a look.
Ah yes, a total flop. But fun to try nonetheless. You never know when you might just get lucky testing out a crazy idea. So that leads me to wondering what might happen if I added a little crème de cassis to the wine first. Crème de cassis is a black-currant-flavored syrup usually mixed in small quantities with Bourgogne Aligoté to make an apéritif called un Kir. I'm wondering if I need a liasion of some sort to help suspend and sustain the bubbles. Any thoughts out there? (Personally, I'm guessing it will work equally as bad as my first attempt...! ) Or maybe I need a cartridge of CO2 (carbon dioxide).....would that work??? Endless questions, endless possibilities! I can't wait for one of these crazy ideas to actually work!
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