The doorbell rang last Thursday at exactly 8:30 a.m. It was Jean-Louis Carbonnier, a slender, 44-year-old French-born expert in all that has to do with the subject of Champagne.

In anticipation of the cork-popping season, I’d been thinking about glassware: Is the standard flute, long my standby and probably yours, the best glass to show off the bubbles, aroma, and taste of sparkling wine? Or is there some less conventional shape that might deliver more pleasure? And so I’d asked Mr. Carbonnier, former director of the Champagne Wines Information Bureau in New York and currently a wine marketing consultant, to make a “house visit.”

Hoping that the post-breakfast smell of espresso coffee was not still lingering too strongly in the house, I’d prepared the dining table with a bowl of freshly toasted almonds and four different pairs of glasses. In the ice bucket, ready to sacrifice itself for our experiment, rested a bottle of Andre Cluet Grand Reserve Champagne. Mr. Carbonnier had suggested this brand as a good example of a so-called “grower Champagne.” Most bigname Champagnes are vinified primarily from purchased grapes. A small but growing number of growers, however, have shifted over to making their own Champagne from at least a portion of the grapes that they previously sold.

I saw Mr. Carbonnier squinting – and frowning – at the deep blue-and-gold label on the bottle of Andre Cluet. “You see these tiny letters ‘NM’ at the bottom?” he said. “They stand for ‘negociant-manipulant.’ That means that the wine was made from purchased grapes.” If Andre Clouet’s own grapes had gone into this bottle, Mr. Carbonnier explained, the small letters would be “RM” for “recoltant-manipulant,” or “grower-maker.”

What caused the change in category in the case of an Andre Cluet? Mr. Carbonnier shrugged and said, “Maybe the firm got a big order from Air France, and they didn’t have enough of their own grapes to satisfy it. So they had to buy grapes.”A grower is permitted to purchase up to 5% of the grapes he uses and still be called a “recoltant-manipulant.” More than that, he becomes a negociant-manipulant.

Whew. So many fine points about labeling only went to show that understanding Champagne isn’t simple. And we hadn’t opened the bottle, let alone dealt with how the bubbles behave.

Mr. Carbonnier, born in Rheims in the heart of Champagne, put his nose into the first pair of glasses, traditional narrow-sided flutes made by Ravenscroft (budget priced at $6) In one, he smelled dust, and in the other, he detected a bit of lint, probably from a towel last used to wipe the flute. “It’s good to swirl a little of the wine to prep the glass,” he said. The French word for that process, he explained, is avine – to get the glass a little “drunk.”

Mr. Carbonnier gently twisted the bottle while holding the cork stationary and putting downward pressure on it, foreclosing the usual explosive pop. He poured a bit in each flute, then gave a quick swirl before pouring the wine out. Voila! – tipsy glassware. “Even with two identical glasses,” he said, “the bubbles can act differently.”

And they did. From one flute, the bubbles rose energetically and as thickly as snowflakes in an inverted blizzard. In the other, the bubbles were fewer, lazier, and larger. What was going on? “The inside of one glass could have an invisible residue from detergent,” said Mr. Carbonnier. “The bubbles, which are carbon dioxide, will react to that.” Even if both glasses had been washed in the same dishwasher load, would they not be equally clean – or filmy? Not necessarily, said Mr. Carbonnier. Depending on their placement in the machine, one could get a better rinsing than the other.

A lively aroma from the strong pinot noir component of Andre Cluet’s blend issued up from the flutes. But it was even more vivid when we tried the next set of glasses: medium sized, tulip shaped chardonnay models made by Riedel, the Austrian pioneer in designing glasses to suit individual wines ($13.95). The bubbles were abundant, but not rising quite as dramatically as in the flutes. Once again, one glass hosted better bubbles than the other. As the weaker of the two started to go flat, Mr. Carbonnier’s intense blue eyes fixed on it like a surgeon contemplating a failing patient. Unexpectedly, he plucked a tiny decorative pebble from a bowl on the sideboard and dropped it with a ping into the glass. Instantly, a fresh new stream of bubbles started to flow up from the pebble, as if they were growing out of it. On the surface of the wine, the stream spread out into a kind of mini-maelstrom.

What caused this eruption from the pebble? “It’s all about the molecules,” said Mr. Carbonnier. “They react to asperities on the surface of the pebble to cause the release of bubbles. In France, we like to do it by dropping in a strawberry.”

Each time Mr. Carbonnier poured Champagne into a glass, a head of foam, or mousse, gathered on the surface, then subsided. “Sometimes the bubbles rush out and make a huge mousse,” he said. “Then, they just as quickly go flat. That also can be caused by a rinse agent.” With a teaspoon, Mr. Carbonnier sharply tapped a glass that had gone flat several minutes after being poured. The bubbles were suddenly renewed. “You can also do like Formula 1 racing car champs do,” he said, “and shake the bottle into a spray.”

Our next “pour” went into a pair of Riedel’s oversized, balloon-shaped red burgundy glasses ($15.99). I thought that they might amplify the Champagne’s aroma even more than the chardonnay glasses, but they didn’t. And the wide curve at the bottom of the glasses cancelled out any chance to view the bubbles rising. The Champagne might as well have been in a shallow pond. And so we moved on to the last pair of glasses: Riedel’s “Rioja” model, which I’d bought for this experiment ($18.95 each) the previous day at 67 Wines on the Upper West Side.

With their profile of a slightly elongated tulip, tapering to a narrow opening, the Rioja glass was vertical enough to permit a lively “bubble show” yet full enough to intensify the Champagne’s aroma. “A good compromise glass,” said Mr. Carbonnier. Not that he is about to banish the classic flute. It is still an ideal glass for young Champagne that has not developed a complex bouquet. In his eyes, “flutes also reenforce the idea that Champagne is a mystical wine that needs its own receptacle.”

Our work done, Mr. Carbonnier said, “You can see that you really need the right glass to drink Champagne from. Much more so than with still red or white wine. As we touched glasses, Mr. Carbonnier invoked a fitting adage of British wine writer Nicholas Faith: “Champagne begins where winemaking stops.”

For a well-rounded primer on Champagne, I highly recommend “Champagne for Dummies,” by Ed McCarthy (Wiley, $16.95). This former Brooklyn high school teacher has thoroughly done his own homework. His profiles of the “25 Top Champagne Houses” can help you find your style of bubbly.