History of champagne
When Hugh Capet was crowned King of France in 987 at the cathedral of Reims, he started a tradition that brought successive monarchs to the region—with the local wine being on prominent display at the coronation banquets.
Following the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715, the court of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans made the sparkling version of Champagne a favorite among the French nobility.
)[2] During the Middle Ages, the wines of the Champagne region were various shades of light red to pale pink as a bitter rivalry developed between the Champenois and their Burgundian neighbors to the south.
The trade route that Flemish merchants used to get to the Burgundy went right through Reims and the Champenois were eager to entice their business with a "cheaper" alternative.
It was not until a Benedictine monk named Dom Pierre Perignon from the Abbey of Hautvillers perfected his techniques would the Champenois be able to truly make white wine from red grapes.
Described by his predecessor, Dom Groussard, and Canon Godinot as a perfectionist, Perignon worked diligently to improve the viticultural practices of Abbey's vineyards and the quality of the wines.
[2] Dom Pérignon was a staunch advocate of aggressive pruning, dictating that vines should grow no higher than 1 metre (3 ft) and produce small yields.
In addition to adding the pinkish/grey coloring, Dom Pérignon knew that the skins imparted different flavoring and coarser textures than he wanted in his high quality wines.
During the cold winters of the Champagne region, temperatures would drop so low that the fermentation process was prematurely halted, leaving some residual sugar and dormant yeast.
[3] Concurrently, advances in glass manufacture in Britain, by George Ravenscroft and others, allowed more robust wine bottle to be made which could contain the effervescence without exploding.
In 1663, the British poet Samuel Butler penned the first written English reference to "brisk" (i.e. frothy) Champagne in his poem Hudibras.
The 1698 George Farquhar play Love and a Bottle featured one of the characters marveling at the steady stream of bubbles in a glass of a Champagne.
This sparked a craze in Paris as restaurants and fashionable society sought to emulate the Duke's tastes for the bubbling wine.
Rather than single estate growers or monasteries producing the majority of wine, private houses or merchants who bought grapes from vineyard owners to make Champagne came to dominate.
Each house hired sales agents to bring samples of their wine to royal courts across Europe as they competed with each other for shares of the growing Champagne market.
Sales agents like Louis Bohne of Veuve Clicquot devised creative schemes to smuggle their wines to their clients.
During Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Charles-Henri Heidsieck traveled by horseback ahead of the French Imperial Army on their way to Moscow.
The French scientist Jean-Antoine Chaptal popularized the understanding that Champagne sparkled because it was sealed in a bottle before fermentation was complete.
[7] The British method of coal fired glassmaking contributed to stronger wine bottles being available that could withstand the pressure of the carbon dioxide gas better.
[1] An important advance made in the early 19th century was developing a technique to remove the sediment caused by dead yeast after the secondary fermentation.
With the aid of her cellar master, Madame Clicquot of the Champagne house Veuve Cliquot developed the process of riddling in the early 19th century to solve the problem of sediments without losing much gas.
To compound the misery for Champenois vine growers, the last few vintages of the 19th century were difficult with frost and rains severely reducing the crop yields.
Along with the introduction of the New Economic Policy the Soviet government decreed in 1924 domestic production of sparkling and dessert wines for the masses.
Not bound by the international trade mark laws and AOP rules the USSR produced in 1970s 249 million bottles of Soviet Champagne per year.
Ultimately, the French Champagne saw its mass introduction back into the Russian beverage scene with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991.
The glaring exclusion of the Aube region, where the historic capital of Champagne—Troyes—is located, promoted further discontent as the Aubois protested the decision.
The government eventually reversed themselves and included the Aube-much to the dismay of vine growers in the Marne who vigorously protested the decision.
The decimation of the region's vineyards provided the opportunity for vine growers to replant with phylloxera resistant rootstock and in more ideal locations for quality grape production.
The 1920 declaration of prohibition in the United States closed off yet another market and the global economic downturn of the Great Depression lead to a further decrease in sales.
The popularity and success of Champagne has inspired many imitators around the world (such as Cava in Spain, Sekt in Germany and several American sparklers) but also within France itself with sparkling Cremants.
