Flow patterns of bubble nucleation sites (called fliers) freely floating in champagne glasses

Laser tomography techniques were used to capture the dynamics of bubbles released from particles (arbitrarily called fliers) freely floating in traditional flutes poured with champagne. By use of long exposure time photography, the trajectories of bubbles released by fliers were found to leave very elegant and characteristic "prints" as they crossed a section of champagne illuminated with a 1 mm thick laser sheet. This characteristic print was made with a succession of lighting filaments. Fine analysis of these prints left by fliers enabled us to deduce the bubbling frequency of each flier (which ranged from about 4 bubbles/s up to about 22 bubbles/s a few seconds after pouring), as well as its velocity through the liquid medium (which ranged from about 0.8 mm/s to about 7.6 mm/s). Finally, this flow visualization technique, very recently applied to the science of champagne and sparkling wines, also proved to be a useful technique to underscore fliers' bubbling instabilities along their rather erratic way through the liquid medium.