Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
1,100
grapes
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Start with what's in the bottle, 750 ml, so about 750 grams of liquid. Skins, seeds and the juice left behind in the press mean you need more than that, call it a kilogram of grapes. How much does one wine grape weigh? Around a gram.
- Liquid in the bottle
- ~750 g
- Grapes needed
- ~1,000 g
- One wine grape
- ~1 g
- 1,000 ÷ 1
- ≈ 1,000 grapes
Start with what's in the bottle, about a pound and a half of liquid. Skins, seeds and the juice left behind in the press mean you need more than that, call it 2 pounds of grapes. How many wine grapes make an ounce? They're small, so maybe 30.
- Liquid in the bottle
- ~1.5 lb
- Grapes needed
- ~2 lb (32 oz)
- Grapes per ounce
- × 30
- 32 × 30
- ≈ 960 grapes
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- Champagne press yield (Comité Champagne): one 4,000 kg marc of grapes
- → 2,550 litres of must
- 2,550 litres ÷ 0.75 litre bottles
- ≈ 3,400 bottles
- 4,000 kg ÷ 3,400 bottles
- ≈ 1.18 kg of grapes per bottle
- 1,180 g ÷ 1.1 g per grape
- ≈ 1,100 grapes
Reference cited by Fermi: Comité Champagne appellation press yield of 102 litres of must per 160 kg of grapes, published by the Union des Maisons de Champagne, with an average Champagne berry weight of 1 to 1.2 grams
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