Home › At the Fountain › Grape Champagne
Grape Champagne
Most Refreshing.
Put 1 gallon American Champagne Syrup into a steel fountain. Add 7 gallons of water, and carbonate thoroughly. Draw through a mineral draft tube in the fountain. Comes out creamy and is very refreshing. May also be made by using 3 quarts of grape juice, dissolving 5 pounds sugar in it, adding 7 gallons of water and charging in fountain.
This is trade-scale fountain work: eight gallons at a time, carbonated under pressure in a steel tank. The proportions scale down cleanly, but the equipment does not.
- The fountainA "steel fountain" is the portable pressure cylinder a soda dispenser was charged in, not a bowl or a dish. Modern equivalents are a keg with a carbonating lid or a countertop carbonator; nothing else in a home kitchen will hold the pressure.
- Ratio, not volumeThe working proportion is 1 part syrup to 7 parts water, or 3 quarts grape juice plus 5 lb sugar to 7 gallons water. Reduce to 2 oz syrup per 14 oz water and you have the same drink in a glass.
- American Champagne SyrupA commercial fountain flavoring of the period. Published formulas vary by maker; many are built on grape or catawba with an added acid, and some carry a trace of vanilla or orris. No modern product corresponds to it; the grape-juice version below is the practical route.
- Carbonate the water, not the syrupSugar solutions foam badly and gas out fast. Carbonate cold plain water and combine with chilled syrup in the glass, or expect much of the charge to be lost as head.
- Cold is the whole trickCarbon dioxide dissolves roughly twice as well near freezing as at room temperature. The syrup and water both want to be at refrigerator temperature or below before charging, which likely accounts for the "creamy" texture the book promises.
- Mineral draft tubeA coarse-bore fountain tube that delivered carbonated water in a soft, slow stream rather than a fine jet. It exists to avoid knocking the gas out of solution, so pour gently.
- Sugar levelFive pounds of sugar in three quarts of grape juice, diluted into seven gallons, works out in roughly the same range as a modern soft drink. Cut the sugar by a third if you are using sweetened bottled juice rather than unsweetened.
- YieldThe full batch is eight gallons, roughly 170 six-ounce fountain glasses. Mix a quart of syrup and hold it refrigerated instead.
The soda fountain trade sold "champagne" as a flavor rather than a wine for decades: the word named a taste and a mouthfeel, a dry-sweet grape-and-citrus tang under heavy carbonation, aimed at customers who wanted the occasion without the drink. Grape juice in particular carried a temperance pedigree in America, having been promoted from the later nineteenth century onward as an unfermented alternative for both the table and the communion cup, and it became a fountain staple as bottled juice grew cheap and reliable. Books like this one were written for the dispenser behind the counter rather than the cook at home, which is why the quantities run to gallons and the instructions assume a pressurized steel cylinder and a choice of draft tubes. The claim that the drink "comes out creamy" is the period's usual selling point for a well-chilled, heavily charged beverage, and it tells you the fountain man's real skill lay less in the syrup than in the gas.