The Champagne Tower
While I don’t normally hop on wedding trends, the champagne tower is something I can get behind. It’s the ultimate party trick and it screams opulence and elegance. While I was unable to find its origins, it’s safe to say that the champagne tower has been a tradition for quite some time and it’s not going away any time soon.
Jack Horn for Wine365 writes:
In order to appreciate the value that the coupe glass has in today’s wine world, it’s important to explore its origins. Surprisingly, those origins don’t begin in the home of Champagne (France), but in England – where it was designed in the 1600’s by a friar of the Benedictine order. However, there’s an old French wives’ tale that the glass was modeled off of Marie Antionette’s breast. While that theory is certainly more entertaining, its veracity has been thoroughly debunked. The glass remained popular in France and other wine-imbibing parts of Europe for nearly three hundred years – before ceding ground to newer models in the back half of the 20th century.
The coupe made its way into the awareness of Americans in the 1920’s, as it became the choice glassware of both flappers and business magnates. The fall of Prohibition at the end of the decade resulted in an explosion of demand for champagne and the coupe glass along with it. However, the fad began to come to an end in the 1980’s, when the flute glass became the pre-eminent vessel for champagne.
I’m planning a champagne tower for a fall wedding. I wanted to ensure that the glassware would hold up. The team at Curated Events in Nashville indulged my request and Kera Photography snapped these photos. I am now 100% confident and ready for my couple to execute this on their wedding day (with the help of the catering staff, of course). It’s such a memorable moment for your guests and the photos and video are always a blast!
Photo by Kera Photography
HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN CHAMPAGNE TOWER
Each layer of the tower can be a square or a circle, with one class at the top. The top glass rests on the three or four glasses that make up the second floor of your pyramid. They in turn stand on the nine glasses of layer three, followed by 16 (layer four) and 25 glasses (layer five). Added up, this makes these totals for your champagne tower:
3 layers: 10 - 14 glasses
4 layers: 26 - 30 glasses
5 layers: 55 glasses
6 layers: 91 glasses
7 layers: 140 glasses
8 layers: 204 glasses
A bottle of champagne has a capacity of 0.75 liters. With a well-built champagne tower, almost nothing is spilled, so all the champagne ends up in the glasses. If you assume five glasses per bottle, you need two - three bottles for 3- layers, six bottles for a four-layer tower, and so on.
Pour slowly and have fun!
(Melodia Coupes from Curated Events)
