Champagne - How it started!

Champagne is one of the most northern wine regions in France and the world. Despite being so far north where cold weather and lack of sun exposure can make it very difficult for grapes to ripen, there is evidence of Romans planting vines here as early as 5th century BC. The name Champagne comes from the Roman province of Campania in Italy and was applied to the era around the end of the Roman era in beginning of the middle ages because the two places resembled each other in everything but weather.

@Champagne Ruinart.
Oldest Champagne House.

Champagne has a rich story and a complex history as well as a complicated economy. It started as a still wine and the fizz in it was purely accidental. When the wines were bottled because of the cold temperature some of the yeast went dormant, in addition to this wines were bottled with residual sugar because of the tendency of the grapes to be under-ripe thus tart and acidic. When the temperature rose in the spring the yeast would revive and start fermenting the sugar again and inside of the sealed bottles the CO2 had nowhere to go but get mixed with the wine and ultimately it exploded the bottle. If the bottle didn’t explode and the cork flew out you would get a wine with bubbles in them, which at that time the French did not find appealing. 

But the British who starting in the late 1600s were very charmed by these wines. Some British wine merchants figured out that they could buy fully fermented high acid wines from champagne in bulk shipments and then bottle them in England with the addition of sugar and molasses thus inducing a secondary fermentation and thus creating what would be known as the Traditional method of making sparkling wine. This was documented by an English scientist by the name Christopher Merrit, who in 1660 gave a paper to the royal society explaining the relationship between sugar and bubbles. It was easier for him to conduct the experiments because by that time the glass blowing technology in England had reached a point where bottles could be produced that could better withstand the pressures of fermentation.

@Madame Clicquot Ponsardin.

Dom Perignon, a Benedictine monk was brought in by the abbey of Somme Pierre du Villere which was an ancient and important abbey in Champagne as a cellar master and asked specifically to get rid of the bubbles in the wine. He failed to stop the bubbles but he did make contributions like using perfect undamaged grapes and using gentle pressing instead of foot-stomping to cut down the phenolic compounds from the grape skin and seeds and also the art of blending wines from white and black grapes. He used more black grapes from the Pinot family than Chardonnay because he believed Chardonnay contributed to more bubbles in the wine. 

@Vintage Champagne Poster.

One of the major contribution to modern Champagne was by Madame Clicquot Ponsardin (or Veuve Cliquot widow Cliquot) who took over the business after her husband passed away by the idea of the riddling rack which is a frame rack used to dislodge the dead yeast cells or lees from the bottles where they can be frozen on the neck of the bottle and dislodged in a single lump and the wine can be topped up by some reserve wine and some sugar, this addition of sugar would determine the sweetness of the final wine depending on which country it was shipped because the Russians liked their wine with a high amount of sweetness as compared to the English who liked to keep the sweetness to a lower level.

French kings were traditionally anointed in Reims, and Champagne was served as part of coronation festivities. Today what we know champagne is a lifestyle drink and mostly a celebratory drink associated with various sports, weddings launching of a ship and much more. 

@Top Champagne's L to R
1. Grand Vintage - Moët & Chandon
2.Dom Perignon Vintage Brut Rosé - Moët & Chandon
3. Cristal Millesime Brut - Louis Roederer
4. Ace of Spades Gold Brut - Champagne Cattier
5. Krug Grande Cuvée
6. Dom Perignon Vintage Brut - Moët & Chandon
7.La Grande Dame - Veuve Clicquot 
Image Credits - Urbanchampagne.com

Article by – Pratik Angre, Introductory Sommelier.