Champagne was said that is "the wine of the kings and the king of the wines". Champagne, exported to 150 countries of the world, is the companion and king of parties: the cork’s "pop" which jumps to the aperitif, acts like a detonator signaling the beginning of celebrations.
The grape for wine was already cultivated 50 to 80 years after Jesus Christ in the area of the North-East of Roman Gaul. The Nectar of the gods so called by Roman Gauls, will achieve a growing reputation ten centuries later and will then become the preferred drink of the rich and powerful.
The Kings of France, up to Charles X in 1328, were very generous with the monasteries of the Marne, and offered to the vineyards of the Champagne Region the recognition and the reputation of a good wine. At this same time the concept of pleasure of drinking wine then was not at all sullied by the concept of sin.
During the Middle Ages, the vineyard gains in notoriety thanks to the famous Champagne fairs, but until the Renaissance it provides especially mellow red wines. The Benedictine abbeys of the region played a big role in the expansion of the vine, such as the Basle Saint and d'Hautvillers abbeys founded at the 7th century.
It is in the middle of XVII century that the idea of the creation of a sparkling wine makes its appearance. The white wines will be called there river wines (cultivated at the edge of the Marne) and the red wines, mountain wines (cultivated on the high slopes of the mountain of Rheims).
It is in 1654, the year of the coronation of Louis XIV, that the Champagne wine becomes his preferred drink during these sixty twelve years of reign. This attraction of the Champagne wine by the monarch allows a new era of prosperity to develop and thus the opening towards outside.
At its beginning, the natural fermentation of the wines, started in autumn, slowed down with the freshness of winter in the cellars. The wines preserved a part of their sugar and with the return of spring, thus of heat, restarted their fermentation.
But, as the wines were kept in barrels, effervescence escaped. When the bottles replaced the barrels, effervescence remained imprisoned until opening, it foamed and became “devil’s wine" or "cork-popper".
Dom Pérignon fulfilled the functions of the wine master for 47 years at the Hautvillers Abbey. About 1668, he lays out the practice of combining grapes of different vintage and "invents" the vintage, helped in that, one says, by Brother Jean Oudard. He shows that the addition of sugar reinforces the second fermentation while making it possible to control it. In 1690, he succeeds in making white wine with black grapes. This idea of genius allowed the inhabitants of the Champagne to obtain a white wine of perfect purity and glare as well as an increased shelf life of the wines (up to 3 or 4 years). For that it was necessary to proceed with a gentle and progressive pressing, whose main principles are still in use today.
Finally, according to legend, Dom Pérignon also proposed the use of the flute to drink Champagne.
Almost at the same time, the development of Spanish Cork made it possible to transport the sparkling wine in bottles and to store it without the cork jumping.
It is at the XVIII century that many manufacturers of Champagne saw the light of day and sales increased considerably during the fifty years which preceded the French revolution.
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