Champagne series part two: The history of the famous sparkling wine

While many believe that we have the French to thank for the most flamboyant alcoholic beverage in the world, it was actually the ancient Romans who planted the first vineyards in the Champagne region.

The word champagne is actually derived from the Italian region of Campania, South of Rome, and champagne is a literal translation from the latin word Campania.

There is little doubt based on current sampling that the vineyards in the area date back nearly two millennium, but the first recorded evidence of plantings are in French accounts belonging to St Remi in the 5th century, the former Bishop of Reims, who famously baptised Clovis I, leading Frankish people (the ancestors to the modern French) to convert to Nicene Christianity.

Early wine was not recognised as champagne, but most commonly was called “vins de reims” in reference to the local rivers.

At first the wine was a pinkish almost pale wine, based on grapes similar to Pinot Noir.

The first case of the wine rising to famous prominence was when French kings were coroneted at the Cathedral of Reims, one of the three major areas in modern day champagne. The first example was in 987, where Hugh Capet (the great) and first King of France from the grandest and oldest European royal house the Capetians, was presented with local wine at grand feasts.

At the time though Burgundy was the dominant wine of France, and the local Champenois (residents of the area) sought to create a vintage to rival the famous region to the South. Flemish merchants passed through the area, and they tried to tempt them with their cheaper wines from the province.

However the climate was too robust to produce a full bodied and confident wine such as the Burgundian wines, with lack of character and aging potential cost the wine.

But the birth of modern champagne was not a purposeful act.

Cold winter temperatures in Champagne halted the fermentation of wine in cellars, which would cause sleeping yeast cells to “reactivate” with the warmer spring and summer months, causing a secondary fermentation. This in turn naturally created carbon dioxide, causing bottles to explode, creating havoc in the cellars.

This was considered a grave error in the winemaking process, and Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Perignon in his early days sought to eradicate the “horror bubbles” from his precious wine.

The famous monk, widely credited with inventing champagne, did not.

Some credit that his successors at the Abbey of Hautvillers (near Eperney and a key location in the 17th century for Champenois) wanted to expand his myth to raise awareness and profile for the church. Dom Groussard is credited with this “falsification” in 1821.

However he (Perignon) did impose a careful set of principles which were published in 1718. It established that Pinot Noir should be the core wine as white grapes had a tendency to re-ferment too easily. Vines were not allowed to grow very large so the concentration and quality was enhanced, and unlike early tradition, grapes were not trodden on but pressed. He also pressed for winemaking to be achieved as naturally as possible.

In the middle ages, Champenoise were said to even try added juice such as Elderberries to try and distinguish their wine from Burgundy vintages.

The modern grandfather of Champagne was actually Christopher Merret, who practiced glassmaking, medicine, was a renowned librarian and had a keen interest in minerals. In 1662 he presented a paper called “Some Observations concerning the Ordering of Wines” to the Royal Society. Here it was unearthed that winemakers could add sugar and/or molasses to make wines sparkling.

In modern terms this is the addition of dosage to stimulate a secondary fermentation on purpose, rather than the accidental one caused hundreds of years ago in the cellars of the region of Champagne.

In those cellars, if the bottles had been stronger than perhaps Champagne as we know it would have been invented far earlier. However Sir Robert Mansell produced glass in England early in the 17th century and used coal powered production to produce stronger wine bottles. This all occurred long before Dom Perignon was said to have created the wine, largely recognised to have happened in 1697.