The Essence of Style by Joan DeJean

Author:Joan DeJean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

7

The Night They

Invented Champagne

When the Bubbly Became an

Overnight Sensation

It didn’t happen quite the way it’s been described: champagne was not invented in a single night. The secret of sparkling wine was, however, discovered quickly, over a period of experimentation that lasted only some three to four years, which is virtually overnight if we keep in mind that this was one of the most revolutionary ideas in the entire history of wine making. In 1669, champagne did not yet exist. By 1674, it not only existed but was being celebrated in the original guide to trendy food and wine as the “in” wine of the moment and one of the finest wines of France. From then on, champagne’s rise to prominence was unstoppable.

Few things evoke a sense of luxury the way that champagne does. What is perhaps most amazing about its well over three-hundred-year-long history is that there hasn’t been a moment when this was not the case. By the turn of the eighteenth century, the bubbly was enshrined in a special niche, one it still occupies today: it had become the wine that was served at all the grandest and the most memorable occasions of public and private life. From the late seventeenth century on, no ceremony or celebration was considered perfect if champagne was not poured. In addition, the bubbly new wine had become an integral part of the dazzling new image of France and the French that Louis XIV had set out to create. As Voltaire put it in his poem “Le Mondain” (The Man of the World): “The sparkling foam of this frosty wine / Is the brilliant image of our Frenchmen.” A frothy, sophisticated wine for a brightly stylish nation. It was a pairing almost too good to be true.

The new French national wine was the creation of one man, still another of those visionary innovators who helped Louis XIV’s reign sparkle. The man who invented champagne was a most unlikely candidate for the job, a far cry from the marketing geniuses who introduced the world to everything from folding umbrellas to stylish cafés. He was a Benedictine monk, content to work magic with grapes and with no desire for personal fame. Had his fellow monks not recorded his exploits for posterity, we would not know that what we think of as one of the most prominent brand names in the champagne industry, Dom Pérignon, is also the name of the individual who gave the world the secret of sparkling wine.

In the late 1660s, Dom (Father) Pierre Pérignon became cellar master at the Abbey of Hautvillers, near Rheims. He remained there until his death, in 1715; his reign and that of Louis XIV were conterminous. Champagne was thus invented at the precise moment when the conditions that made its phenomenal success story possible were being created, just in time to become the shimmering wine for a glittering age, the wine that could, and did, scintillate by candlelight and mirror light.

Before the late 1660s, when people spoke

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