Le Gard'Bulles

[tomstevenson]

Ever come across this clever device? The reverse of the Vacu-Vin, this pumps air into a part-filled bottle of sparkling wine, the idea being that the pressure built up will prevent CO2 escaping from the wine. Its inventor obvliously flunked physics at school because he has not taken into account the principle of partial pressures. Although the air will be pressurised, the CO2 element (less than one per cent) will not and this gas thus continues to escape from the wine. Furthermore, as oxygen represents 21 per cent of air and a minuscule percentage of the wine, this brilliant invention actually impregnates the wine with oxygen, so not only does Le Gard'Bulles not stop the fizz from fading, but it oxidises the wine at the same time. Nice one!

[Roberta]

Amazing. I'll bet they sell a million of 'em

[tomstevenson]

Just over one million at the last count, so I hear, which proves that the French know even less about physics than they do about wine. Oops! Did I actually write that? Well, slap my wrist ...

[Woodman]

Tom, it's a pleasure to make your "acquaintance". Now, having said that, your last post was quite the little gem. Gotta love the English sense of humor, which has obviously been developed post 1770's. The English had no humor whatsoever about that little uprising in the Colonies........

[tomstevenson]

Well Woody, with a name like that, you must have a sense of humour too. Is that how you like your wine? We Brits have to have a sense of humour because who else but a pack of jokers would want to throw away their currency and surrender their sovereignty to a pan European suprastate? We have not been invaded for over a thousand years and have spent the last 50 years giving back our colonies (well, some made their own arrangements of course) on the grounds that every country has the right to self-determination, only now to be told that we don't! And we do not even get the opportunity to vote on it. Well, that's democracy for you.