The ‘popping’ cork, the fizz and
the bubbly taste, it could only be Champagne. Or should we say, ‘Merret’? For
nearly three centuries, the French have fought to ensure that only the
sparkling wine made in a particular part of France can be called Champagne.
Success, as the saying goes, has
many fathers. So it’s not surprising that many folk claim to have “invented”
champagne. Legend has it that in the 17th century a French monk named Dom
Pierre Pérignon first made this wine at the abbey of Saint Pierre d’Hautvillers
in the region called Champagne. “Come quickly! I am drinking the stars,” were
Pérignon’s supposed words when he first tasted what we now know as champagne.
The story was probably created by
the monastery’s 19th-century cellar master, Dom Groussard, trying to boost the
abbey’s reputation and his own. In the 17th century, the last thing Dom
Pérignon would have wanted in his wines were bubbles, because bottles in those
days would usually explode from the pressure. Cellar workers wore metal masks
to protect their faces from flying glass and accidentally fermented wine was
known as vin du diable (devil’s
wine). But the star-sipping story contributes to the mystique surrounding
France’s most famous export.
If you really want to taunt a Champenois, try repeating the story popular
in the region of Limoux, in Languedoc, claiming that France’s first sparkling
wine, known locally as blanquette,
was invented by Benedictine monks at the abbey of Saint Hilaire
more than a century before Dom Pérignon was born.
There is evidence from abbey
records dating back to 1531 to support that the brothers of Saint Hilaire
developed a technique to create bubbles in their wine, probably by bottling it
before fermentation had been completed, a technique known as the méthode rurale or ancestrale. The wines would
be kept in flasks stoppered with plugs made from the bark of cork trees found in
Spain. But there is little to support the claim that Saint Hilaire was a victim
of espionage when the secret of sparkling wine was stolen by Dom Pérignon when
he was a small friar.
Even if Dom Pérignon had stolen
Saint Hilaire’s secrets it wouldn’t have mattered, because the process he is
credited with inventing is the méthode
champenoise, in which a sparkling wine is created by inducing a
second fermentation once the wine has been bottled.
So forget the Limoux story. If you want to taunt the French a second time, claim that sparkling wine in the champagne style, the true méthode champenoise, was discovered by the English!
The evidence for that is fairly
reliable, derived from a paper presented in six years before Dom Pérignon
arrived in Hautvillers to the Royal Society by English scientist Dr.
Christopher Merret. Merret’s paper was on winemaking practices in which he
described the English custom of adding “sugar and molasses to all sorts of wine
to make them brisk and sparkling”.
So sacre
bleu! Is it really Merret we have to thank for the sound of a cork popping? Long before Dom Pérignon drank his
stars English winemakers were starting a second fermentation in the bottle that
would add carbon dioxide to their imported wine.
In the same year of 1662 Sir
Kenelm Digby perfected a glass bottle that, when stoppered with corks tied down
with string, was strong enough to withstand the pressure created by a second
fermentation. The stars aligned to make possible the sparkling wine we just
happen to call champagne but which should—pace
to
the monks of Limoux—probably be called Britfizz.
Check the blog often for more news, tips, and tasting notices!
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