Champagne Trivia
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44 free Champagne trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
41 free Champagne trivia questions with answers. Champagne trivia to pour alongside the real thing. These 44 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 44 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: the two Pinots are black grapes, but their juice runs clear, so quick, gentle pressing keeps the wine white.
Q 02How does the pressure inside a champagne bottle compare with that in a car tyre?
About three times as high
About three times as high: five to six bar builds up as the wine ferments in the bottle, which is why the glass is thick and built to withstand far more.
Q 03Which 1919 treaty protected the name Champagne?
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles obliged Germany to respect French rules on regional wine names, repeating a protection for Champagne first agreed at Madrid in 1891.
Q 04Which sparkling wine from southern France, recorded by monks in 1531, predates champagne's bubbles?
Blanquette de Limoux
Blanquette de Limoux came from the abbey of Saint-Hilaire, where wine was bottled before its first fermentation had finished, trapping the 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, six years before Dom Pérignon reached Hautvillers; England's coal-fired glass could take 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 07Which champagne house released the first Dom Pérignon, a 1921 vintage, in 1936?
Moët & Chandon
Moët & Chandon shipped the first bottles to New York aboard the liner Normandie; the Dom Pérignon name had come from Mercier in 1927 as a wedding present between the two families.
Q 08Which champagne house, founded in Reims in 1729, is generally regarded as the oldest?
Ruinart
Ruinart began when Nicolas Ruinart sent 'wine with bubbles' to his cloth customers as gifts; within six years the wine had outgrown the cloth trade, which he gave up.
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 10Who is credited with inventing the riddling table for clearing champagne?
Madame Clicquot
Madame Clicquot devised the riddling table in 1816: bottles sit neck-down in angled holes and are turned until the sediment settles against the cork, ready to be removed.
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 13Which champagne label term, despite its name, marks a wine sweeter than Brut?
Extra dry
Extra dry holds 12 to 17 grams of sugar per litre, above Brut's limit of 12, so anyone after the driest glass should look instead for Brut nature, which has no added sugar.
Q 21The Champagne riots of 1911 saw growers dump grapes and wine trucked in from which region?
The Loire
Growers stopped loads of Loire grapes that merchants were passing off as Champagne and tipped them into the river, then stormed the warehouses of producers accused of fraud.
Q 22Dan Gurney started the podium champagne spray tradition after winning which race in 1967?
The 24 Hours of Le Mans
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 23Which biblical king's name goes on a 15-litre champagne bottle, twenty bottles' worth?
Nebuchadnezzar
Q 14The dry style labelled 'Brut' was created for the British market in the 1870s by which house?
Pommery
Pommery made its 1874 vintage far drier than usual to suit London tastes, when champagne was normally very sweet; Perrier-Jouët had already tried an unsweetened 1846 vintage.
Q 15What is the wire cage that holds a champagne cork in place called?
A muselet
A muselet: Adolphe Jacquesson devised the wire cage in 1844 in place of the cord once used to tie corks down, and by tradition it takes six half-turns to open.
Q 16Which champagne house, first seen in Live and Let Die in 1973, became James Bond's regular on-screen choice?
Bollinger
Bollinger took over on screen from Dom Pérignon, which Sean Connery's Bond nearly used as a weapon in Dr. No and drank in Goldfinger.
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 feared assassination and was indeed 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 chose Kent because its chalky soil and mild climate resemble Champagne's, becoming the first champagne house to invest in making English sparkling wine.
Q 20Perrier-Jouët's flower-painted Belle Epoque bottle was designed by which Art Nouveau artist?
Emile Gallé
Emile Gallé, the Nancy glass artist, decorated magnums with Japanese anemones for Perrier-Jouët in 1902; the house revived the design in 1969 for its Belle Epoque cuvée.
Nebuchadnezzar: 15 litres, or twenty standard bottles; such giants are generally filled with champagne that fermented in standard bottles or magnums.
Q 24A 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 25Legend falsely says the champagne coupe was moulded on which French queen's breast?
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette could not have been the model: the coupe was being made in England around 1663, almost a century before she was born.
Q 26Which town south of Reims has an Avenue de Champagne lined with famous houses above miles of chalk cellars?
Épernay
Épernay's Avenue de Champagne sits on some 110 km of cellars; locals call it the most expensive street in the world for the millions of bottles ageing underneath.
Q 27The 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, the last being Charles X in 1825; the anointing oil came from the Holy Ampulla, said to have been brought by a dove for Clovis's baptism.
Q 28Champagne's hillsides, houses and cellars gained which status in 2015?
World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site status covers the cellars as well as the slopes: many began as old chalk quarries, later linked by galleries to store and age the wine.
Q 29Sabrage, opening a bottle with a sabre, is traditionally linked to the light cavalry of which leader?
Napoleon
Napoleon's hussars are said to have opened bottles with their sabres on horseback. No sharp edge is needed: a knock where the seam meets the lip lets the pressure inside snap off the neck.
Q 30Which champagne style is made from Chardonnay alone?
Blanc de blancs
Blanc de blancs is made only from white grapes, in practice Chardonnay; blanc de noirs is the reverse, a white wine pressed from the dark-skinned grapes.