Lovely bubbly: price isn't everything with champagne

Expert wine tasters cannot tell which grapes are in sparkling wines when asked to taste them blind, an Oxford University-led study has found. And the champagnes they rated highly weren't always the most expensive, showing that you don't necessarily have to fork out when buying champers for your Christmas party. The scientists tested the claim that the relative proportions of red and white grapes each contribute distinct flavours to champagne. They found that although expert champagne tasters could detect differences between sparkling wines, their perception of the proportions of different grapes in sparkling wines was influenced by other factors instead. The researchers from Oxford University and the Centre for the Study of the Senses, University of London, conducted a blind tasting experiment. They asked participants to drink a selection of different sparkling wines from black tasting glasses and to report back on the proportion of white grapes in each. The champagnes ranged from blancs de blancs , composed of 100% white grapes, to blancs de noir , from 100% red grapes.