Champagne is the quintessential drink for celebrations. When it’s a birthday, good news happens or they just like the taste, people uncork bottles to celebrate that long-awaited event that everyone is happy about.
Where you usually see the most champagne is at motorsports competitions. The drivers who reach the podium bathe their teammates and the public in champagne as a sign of celebration and joy for having achieved a great result.
However, not everyone likes champagne, as it has a bitter taste like any alcoholic beverage. Many people have the habit of pouring a sugar cube into a glass. However, the Italians take the cake with this ritual.
The Italians’ reason for carrying out this action corresponds more to a superstition than to the taste of the drink itself. According to tradition, it is done to scare away the devil, since it is said that he wants to take away good things and see people suffer. But if sugar is added in an unexpected place, the devil cannot act.
This has caused cocktail experts such as David A. Embury to call the tradition “sacrilege”, since, in their opinion, it is a way of manipulating the product.
Other knowledgeable people on the subject, such as José Aragunde and Esther Daporta, are more tolerant, and affirm that, although it is better to do this with lower quality products, “let everyone enjoy it as they wish,” says Daporta.
