Champagne Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
47 free Champagne trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
41 free Champagne trivia questions with answers. Champagne trivia to pour alongside the real thing. These 47 questions cover the wine itself (the three grapes, why bubbles form, the six bars of pressure behind the cork, riddling and disgorgement, what Brut means and why the British are to blame for it), the region (Reims, Épernay, the chalk cellars UNESCO listed in 2015, and the 1911 riots when growers dumped fake grapes in the Marne) and the houses: Ruinart, Moët, Veuve Clicquot, Krug, Bollinger, Pol Roger, Louis Roederer, Taittinger and the rest. Along the way you will meet the monk who did not invent sparkling wine, the widow who did invent the riddling table, the tsar who wanted a clear bottle so he could see poison, the Le Mans winner who started spraying it on podiums, and the biblical kings the giant bottles are named after. Every answer is checked against a documented source, so it is safe for a New Year's Eve party, a wine club or anyone who wants to sound clever with a flute in hand.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which three grapes are used to make almost all champagne?
Pinot noir, Pinot meunier and Chardonnay
Pinot noir, Pinot meunier and Chardonnay make up nearly all plantings; Pinot blanc, Pinot gris, Arbane and Petit Meslier are also permitted but together cover under 1% of the vineyard.
Q 02Roughly what pressure builds up inside a bottle of champagne?
Six bar, about 90 psi
Around six bar, about 90 psi, roughly three times the pressure in a car tyre, which is why champagne bottles are made of thick, heavy glass.
Q 03The name 'Champagne' has been legally protected under an international treaty signed in which year?
1891
The Madrid Agreement of 1891 first reserved the name for wine from the region, reaffirmed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919; EU law reserves it for sparkling wine made there.
Q 04What is the oldest recorded sparkling wine, predating Dom Pérignon?
Blanquette de Limoux
Blanquette de Limoux: monks at the abbey of Saint-Hilaire near Limoux recorded it in 1531, bottling wine before its first fermentation had finished so that it kept its fizz.
Q 05Which English scientist's 1662 paper explained that adding sugar before bottling makes wine sparkle?
Christopher Merret
Christopher Merret told the Royal Society in 1662 that adding sugar to finished wine made it sparkle, decades before the method was documented in Champagne; English coal-fired glass could withstand the pressure.
Q 06Dom Pérignon was a monk of which religious order?
Benedictine
Dom Pierre Pérignon was a Benedictine monk and cellar master at the Abbey of Hautvillers from 1668 until his death in 1715; ironically he worked to keep bubbles out of the wine.
Q 07In which year was Dom Pérignon's first vintage finally put on sale?
1936
First sold in 1936: the 1921 vintage was shipped to New York that year aboard the liner Normandie; Mercier had given Moët the Dom Pérignon name in 1927 as a wedding present.
Q 08Which is the oldest established champagne house, making champagne exclusively since 1729?
Ruinart
Nicolas Ruinart started giving 'wine with bubbles' to his cloth customers and gave up cloth six years later.
Q 09Moët & Chandon was founded in 1743 by whom?
Claude Moët
Claude Moët, a wine trader, founded the house in 1743; his grandson Jean-Remy made it famous, and the Chandon name was added in 1833 when son-in-law Pierre-Gabriel Chandon joined the firm.
Q 10Madame Clicquot is credited with inventing the riddling table, to clarify champagne, in which year?
1816
In 1816 Madame Clicquot and her cellar master Antoine de Müller devised the riddling table, a board drilled with angled holes that let the sediment gather in the neck for removal.
Q 11Veuve Clicquot's label has been which distinctive colour since the late 19th century?
Yellow
The yellow label dates from 1877, when the house registered its distinctive orange-yellow as a trademark; the firm had been founded in Reims in 1772 by Philippe Clicquot.
Q 12What is the French name for riddling, turning bottles so the sediment collects in the neck?
Remuage
Remuage is the riddling: bottles in a pupitre are turned and tilted a little each day over several weeks until they stand neck-down with the sediment gathered on the cap.
Q 13Under the appellation rules, champagne must spend at least how long developing in the bottle?
Fifteen months
The rules require at least fifteen months in the bottle, twelve of them on the lees, for non-vintage champagne; vintage wine, from a single year's grapes, must spend three years.
Q 21Perrier-Jouët's flower-painted Belle Epoque bottle was designed by which Art Nouveau artist?
Emile Gallé
Emile Gallé, the Nancy glass artist, painted the Japanese anemones for Perrier-Jouët in 1902; the design lay forgotten until the 1960s and was launched as Belle Epoque in 1969.
Q 22The Champagne riots of 1911 saw growers dump grapes and wine from which region into the Marne?
The Loire
Growers intercepted shipments of Loire grapes and wine that merchants were passing off as Champagne and tipped them into the Marne; in April 1911 houses in Aÿ were sacked.
Q 23Dan Gurney started the podium champagne spray tradition after winning which race in 1967?
The 24 Hours of Le Mans
Q 14The dry style labelled 'Brut' was created for the British market by which house in 1876?
Pommery
Pommery released the first brut champagne for the London market in 1876; Perrier-Jouët had tested the water by shipping an unsweetened 1846 vintage, at a time when champagne was usually very sweet.
Q 15The wire cage that keeps a champagne cork in, the muselet, was invented in 1844 by whom?
Adolphe Jaquesson
Adolphe Jaquesson patented the muselet in 1844; the wire cage replaced string and wax seals, and its twist of wire is loosened with six half-turns.
Q 16Which champagne house has used the James Bond films as marketing since Live and Let Die in 1973?
Bollinger
Bollinger has marketed through Bond since Live and Let Die (1973), when 007 first ordered it on screen, and issued a Special Cuvée 007 edition for No Time to Die; the house was founded in Aÿ in 1829.
Q 17Cristal, considered the first prestige cuvée, was created in 1876 for which ruler?
Tsar Alexander II of Russia
Cristal was created in 1876 for Tsar Alexander II of Russia, the house's most important customer, who had survived several assassination attempts and was killed by a bomb in 1881.
Q 18Which champagne house makes a prestige cuvée named for Sir Winston Churchill, its most famous devotee?
Pol Roger
Pol Roger launched the Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill with the 1975 vintage, released in 1984; Churchill drank the house's wine for decades, and it put a black border on its labels when he died in 1965.
Q 19Which house makes the all-Chardonnay Comtes de Champagne and planted vines in Kent in 2017?
Taittinger
Taittinger makes Comtes de Champagne, its prestige cuvée first produced from the 1952 vintage, and in 2017 planted its first English vines near Chilham in Kent.
Q 20Which actress was rumoured to keep a month's supply of Piper-Heidsieck in her kitchen?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe reportedly kept some 350 bottles of Piper-Heidsieck at home and said she woke each morning with a glass of it; the house was founded in Reims in 1785.
At the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans, Dan Gurney and A. J. Foyt beat the Ferraris in a Ford Mk IV; on the podium Gurney shook the bottle and sprayed the crowd, and the tradition stuck.
Q 24Which biblical king's name goes on a 15-litre champagne bottle, twenty bottles' worth?
Nebuchadnezzar
Nebuchadnezzar: 15 litres, or twenty standard bottles; sizes above the 3-litre jeroboam are not fermented in their own bottle but filled by transfer from smaller ones.
Q 25A magnum holds how much champagne?
1.5 litres
A magnum holds 1.5 litres, two standard bottles; it is thought to age more gracefully because the same cork and headspace serve twice the wine, giving less oxygen per litre.
Q 26The champagne coupe, first made around 1663 in Greenwich, was originally called what?
A tazza
It was called a tazza, a shallow stemmed bowl made at the Duke of Buckingham's Greenwich glassworks; the tale that the coupe was moulded on Marie Antoinette is a myth, as the glass predates her by a century.
Q 27Which town's Avenue de Champagne is lined with the leading houses, their cellars cut into the chalk below?
Épernay
Épernay's Avenue de Champagne is home to Moët & Chandon and Perrier-Jouët among others, above an estimated 110 km of chalk cellars.
Q 28The cathedral of Reims, the region's largest city, was the traditional site of what?
The coronation of French kings
Reims cathedral was the coronation church of French kings for eight centuries, ending with Charles X in 1825, using the Holy Ampulla of oil said to have been brought by a dove at Clovis's baptism.
Q 29The 'Champagne Hillsides, Houses and Cellars' joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in which year?
2015
Inscribed in July 2015, in the same session as Burgundy's Climats, the listing covers the historic hillsides around Hautvillers and Aÿ, the Saint-Nicaise hill in Reims and the houses' chalk cellars.
Q 30Sabrage, opening a bottle with a sabre, is traditionally linked to the light cavalry of which leader?
Napoleon
Napoleon's light cavalry, the hussars, are said to have opened bottles with their sabres while riding; one tale has his officers doing so to impress the young widow Clicquot.