A history of… champagne
If you'd like some more bubbles have you tried adding pigeon's dung?
My dear friend Hilary, along with many other excellent qualities, is noted for the generosity with which he supplies champagne to his guests. As a small tribute to him I’d therefore like to explore the history of this most celebratory of drinks.
You may think that this will be a fairly brief piece – after all everyone knows the story of how champagne was invented. The Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon (1638–1715) became the cellarer, the person in charge of wine production, at Abbaye Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers in 1668 and held the position for the rest of his life. One day he opened a bottle in which the fermentation had continued over winter, creating a vibrant, sparkling wine. Upon sampling it he was so overcome that he called out to his fellow monks, “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!” In the years that followed he learned how to replicate this process and champagne was born. Except (and this will likely come as no surprise to regular readers of these pieces) this isn’t true at all.1
Champagne is an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) area in what was the historical province of Champagne in the north-east of France. Only sparkling wine produced in the 343 square kilometres (132 square miles) of this region can be officially labeled as ‘champagne’ – clearly not all sparkling wines are champagne, and the area does produce some still wine, though it is labelled differently, such as Coteaux Champenois. The bubbles in sparkling wine are carbon dioxide, created by fermentation taking place when the wine is in a sealed vessel – a bottle or a vat – which forces the gas to dissolve into the liquid.
For much of human history the creation of bubbles in wine has been considered a bug, rather than a feature, as the pressure created by this continued fermentation would rupture the vessel in which it was taking place. We have a description of this happening, as a metaphor, in the Gospel of Luke 5:37:
And no one puts new wine into old skins, and if otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and itself will be poured out, and the skins will be destroyed.
Wine making in the Champagne region began in Roman times with the name ‘Champagne’ coming from the Latin campania meaning ‘open countryside’ with rolling fields and treeless hills (Champagne doesn’t mean ‘chalky field’2 as you may have read elsewhere). By the Middle Ages it’s excellence was widely known with Pope Urban II (1035–1099), a native Champenois, claimed that the wine of Aÿ (a centre of champagne production to this day) was the greatest in the world. For many years the Champenois attempted to make red wines that would rival the depth and colour of those produced in Burgundy; however, their cooler climate of their lands made this impossible. After decades of trying (including adding elderberries to their wine to make it richer) they gave up on red wine, and decided to make white instead.
Initially they attempted this using white grapes, but the resultant wine lacked flavour and was short lived. They then hit upon the idea of using red grapes, particularly Pinot noir, removing the skins from the pressing to stop it darkening (though somewhat imperfectly).3 All of this wine from Champagne was, however, still; for the invention of intentionally produced sparkling wine we need to look elsewhere. In Limoux, in the south of France, the Benedictine monks at the abbey in Saint‑Hilaire had similarly been making wine for centuries and in records dating from 1531 we know that they were producing something very special indeed, a wine called blanquette.4 This was a sparkling wine that underwent secondary fermentation in flasks which were, critically, topped with corks5 (which could withstand the pressure created).6 You may be forgiven for wondering if Dom Pérignon, more than a century later, learned these techniques from his Benedictine brothers and introduced them at his abbey to create the drink that we know today.7 In fact, he did the opposite.
It is without question that under his mastership the wines produced at the Abbaye Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers improved immeasurably. He adopted a more systematic approach to vine growing and grape selection, and ensured that unbruised grapes were gently pressed to create a truly white wine from red fruit. He did have one significant problem, which was that the cold winters would cause wine to stop fermenting in their bottles, only to recommence as temperatures warmed in the spring. The carbon dioxide thus created could force corks from their bottles or cause them to explode and so he focused upon careful racking and bottling to prevent this happening. Far from inventing the stuff, Dom Pérignon worked tirelessly to stop champagne being produced! It has been reported that upon his death in 1715 not a single bottle of sparkling wine was found in the Abbaye’s inventory.
The Limoux bubbles of the 16th and 17th centuries8 were being produced by something now called méthode ancestrale (ancestral method). The wine was partially fermented in a barrel or vat; it was then bottled before fermentation was fully complete, often in winter when low temperatures paused yeast activity then as temperatures rose in spring, fermentation resumed in the sealed bottle. There is however another way of achieving the same result, adding some yeast and sugar to already fermented wine, what today is called méthode traditionnelle (or the ‘champagne method’) but it wasn’t actually invented in Champagne, or even in France, but rather in England.
The English had been drinking the wine of Champagne for decades,9 generally importing in barrels and bottling it locally. There it underwent secondary fermentation, but critically these bottles were much less likely to explode than their French counterparts. The English bottles were produced on coal, rather than wood10 fires, which burned hotter and more controllably, enabling thicker, tougher vessels to be created. In this the wine could happily bubble away before delighting those who consumed it with its sparkles, as described in this drinking song from the 167611 play The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter written by Sir George Etherege (c.1636–1692):
The pleasures of love and the joys of good Wine,
To perfect our happiness wisely we join.
We to beauty all day
Give the sovereign sway,
And her favourite nymphs devoutly obey;
At the plays we are constantly making our court,
And when they are ended we follow the sport
To the Mall and the Park,
Where we love till ’tis dark.
Then sparkling Champagne
Puts an end to their reign;
It quickly recovers
Poor languishing lovers…
Sometimes though the natural fermentation was not enough and a helping hand was needed. On December 2nd 1662, Dr Christopher Merret (1614–1695) presented a paper to the nascent Royal Society entitled ‘Some Observations on the Ordering of Wine’ in which he described how this was done:
Our Wine-Coopers of later times, use vast quantitys of Sugar and Molossus, to all Sorts of wines, to make them drink brisk and Sparkling, and to give them Spirit, as also to mend their bad tastes, all which Raisins, and Cute and Stumme performe.
This wasn’t the only way in which one could add more froth to the wine, but some of the other methods were fairly unpleasant, as The Compleat Farmer12 (1769) explains:
It is true that many dealers in wine, seeing how immoderately fond most people were of this sparing liquor, did often put into it alum, spirit of wine, pigeon’s dung, and many other drugs, to make it froth exceedingly.
It is in the early years of the 18th century that we see champagne as we know it being developed. The French began to use stronger bottles, importing them from England or manufacturing themselves, and secondary fermentation became something to be actively encouraged, rather than desperately avoided. This development was driven to no small degree by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who became the Regent of France in 1715. Philippe loved bubbles in his champagne wine and served it at his nightly petits soupers. Soon all the well-to-do of Paris became obsessed with the drink and the wine makers rushed to accommodate them. Shortly before the foundation of the earliest champagne house (Ruinart in 1729) a technique known as liqueur de tirage – the deliberate addition of sugar and yeast to initiate secondary fermentation in bottle – began to be employed, mimicking the actions of the wine coopers Merret described some 70 years earlier.
This champagne wasn’t quite the same as you might have supped recently. Though initially quite dry (as the Church frowned upon liqueurs) it soon became much sweeter, something that persisted well into the late 19th century. This was because sugar was deliberately added to it to sweeten it, so much so that it was sweeter than many modern dessert wines. The sweetening varied by market, with the Russians drinking wine that could have as much as 225 grams (8 ounces) of sugar in each bottle. The British liked their wine much drier, with less than 60 grams, but even that is far sweeter than today’s Brut champagne which generally has fewer than 15 grams of sugar in it (none of it added). This sweet champagne was served chilled, as we would expect, though sometimes over shavings or cubes of ice, which we probably wouldn’t.
The fizz also tended to be somewhat cloudy, as a result of the products of fermentation remaining in the bottle. Initially producers would tip the wine from bottle to bottle, attempting to leave the sediment behind, but this was imperfect, time consuming and damaged to the wine. The solution was the process of riddling and disgorging, developed by Veuve Clicquot in the early 19th. The riddling was the gentle turning and tilting of the bottle to cause the sediment to collect in the neck, where it could be popped out through disgorgement (at which point the bottle was topped up and resealed). Nowadays a disgorgement technique developed in 1884 by Armand Walfard of the Binet Champagne house, known as ‘disgorgement à la glace’ (ice disgorgement), is employed. It involves freezing the sediment in the bottle neck using a refrigerating solution before removing it, minimizing wine and pressure loss.
Volumes can, and have, been written about the histories of the great champagne houses and there are many characters of significance, but one in particular stands out. Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin was born in Reims in 1777, the daughter of Nicolas Ponsardin, a wealthy textile manufacturer who later became mayor of Reims under Napoleon. When she was 21 she married François Clicquot, heir to an eponymous champagne house. They had a daughter, but tragedy struck in 1806 when Nicolas died (probably of typhus). Nicolas’s father wanted to close down the champagne house, but Barbe-Nicole asked him to let her run it. He agreed – on the condition that she went through a winemaking apprenticeship. The Napoleonic code at the time allowed women few freedoms – only a widow, a veuve, was allowed to own and run a business. She renamed the business Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin and today it is one of the largest champagne producers.
Barbe-Nicole didn’t simply run her business; she innovated the industry. She introduced the first vintage champagne in 1810 and created the first blended rosé champagne in 1818. The riddling and disgorging process described earlier? That was her idea (according to legend she was inspired by her kitchen table to create riddling racks that would allow bottles to be stored neck downwards and be regularly turned). If you enjoy champagne, you have much to thank her for.
It would be remiss of me to end without mentioning arguably the greatest champagne drinker of all time – Winston Churchill. Churchill was a huge fan of Pol Roger, ever since ordering his first bottle from them in 1908. Over the following 57 years it has been claimed that he consumed an astonishing 42,000 bottles of their fizz, roughly two a day. It is worth noting that these were pint (568ml) bottles but even so this is probably an exaggeration, but likely not by much. When he died in 1965, Odette Pol-Roger had black borders printed on the labels of all of the bottles they shipped to the UK as a mark of respect. In his memory they created Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, a prestige wine produced only from the very best vintages and matured for at least ten years.
There are of course many other sparkling wines – cava, prosecco and Asti spumante to name but three – but let us not speak of them here. Lest you think that I am a total wine snob there are many excellent fizzes produced using the méthode traditionelle, just not in the Champagne region (and so cannot be called champagne). I may reward myself with a glass of one of these tonight, Hundred Hills,13 produced not far from where I live in Oxford, and which is truly exceptional.
The story was concocted as a marketing tool in the 19th century.
I, sap that I am, believed this until researching this piece.
I have seen it described as being grey in colour, which doesn’t sound great.
It is somewhat different to champagne though, as it is made mostly from white Mauzac grapes.
The Romans had used corks for their wine, but their usage was lost for many centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (along with lots of other things).
Prior to the use of corks bottles were often sealed with oiled rags, a clearly imperfect solution.
There is a totally spurious myth claiming that this is what happened.
And indeed to this day.
Its popularity was driven by Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Saint-Évremond whom Wikipedia describes as ‘A soldier, hedonist, essayist, and literary critic.’
In 1615 James I banned the use of wood for glassmaking fires so as not to denude stocks that could be used for shipbuilding
There is an even earlier reference to what is probably sparking champagne in Samuel Butler’s 1663 poem Hudibras:
And make it brisk champagne become,
Where’er you tread, your foot shall set
The primrose and the violet.
Or to give it its full title: The Complete Farmer: or, a General Dictionary of Husbandry, in all its Branches; containing the various methods of cultivating and improving every species of land, according to the precepts of both the Old and New Husbandry. Comprising every thing valuable in the best writers on this subject, viz. Linnæus, Chateauvieux, the Marquis of Turbilly, Platt, Evelyn, Worlidge, Mortimer, Tull, Ellis, Miller, Hale, Lisle, Roque, Mills, &c. Together with a great variety of new discoveries and improvements. Also the whole business of breeding, managing, and fattening cattle of all kinds; and the most approved methods of curing the various diseases to which they are subject. Together with the method of raising bees, and of acquiring large quantities of wax and honey, without destroying those laborious insects. To which is now first added, the Gardener’s Kalendar, calculated for the use of farmers and country gentlemen. Illustrated with a great variety of folio copper-plates, finely engraved; exhibiting all the instruments used in husbandry; particularly those lately invented, and presented to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. in London; many of which have never yet appeared in a work of this nature. Which is a bit of a mouthful.
They have not paid me to mention them!