Champagne: An odd duck in the crowd

Champagne, the uncrowned king of exception. This wine grosses in defying the laws of wine. A fascinating phenomenon that demands closer inspection.

To ease suffering and provide the Catholic Church with much-needed mass wine, in earlier times wine was made everywhere. Even in places where it was actually often too cold. The French region of Champagne is one such frontier area. In this slightly hilly, wooded area, rapeseed, sugar beet and cereals seem a much more logical choice than the grape. But the aforementioned reasons as well as its optimal location in relation to Paris - you just have to go down the river Marne - mean that the 'Vin de Reims' nevertheless remained profitable. That this 'tricky'
region has become so improbably successful is the result of chance, evolution and hard work. Not just from the French side. With a little goodwill, you can see this sparkling wine as the result of a successful pan-European collaboration some two to three hundred years ago. A more or less accidental collaboration between French winemakers, English merchants and German investors.

TOILING MONKS AND ROGUE TRADERS

What is certain is that the northern location of this region demands the utmost from the improvisational skills of winemakers and merchants. Unlike in more southern regions, one has to be creative in this northern region because it is actually too cold. It was dedicated hard-working monks like Dom Pérignon (1638-1715) who pulled out all the stops to still make quality wine. They experimented, improved processes and took wines to a new level. But champagne as we know it would not have existed without English merchants adding sugar to wine as early as the mid-17th century - both to mask mistakes and to give the wine bubbles. 'Absurd practices of a bunch of barbaric islanders,' would have been the likely response to this from the Frenchman of the time. But it turns out that the thin, light wines of Champagne lend themselves ideally to a so-called second fermentation in the bottle, during which the bubble is formed.

CONTAGIOUS VIRUS

In London, the demand for sparkling wines grew rapidly, and little by little, the love for bubbles also grew in France. After King Louis XV authorised the transport and sale in bottle in 1728, a gap in the market opened up. The linen merchant Nicolas Ruinart was the first to dive into this niche and founded the still existing, eponymous champagne house. The champagne trade quickly dwarfed that of linen, and Ruinart's success soon attracted - mostly German - fellow textile merchants. They established house after house and from there
That many labels are adorned by Germanic names such as Krug, Deutz, Heidsieck, Mumm and Bollinger. German traders proved to be champagne's new secret weapon. Foreign languages were less of a problem and they managed to infect world markets with the champagne virus.

Text Huib Edixhoven

Curious about the full article? You can read it in the latest Winelife edition 68. Order this one here!

Don't want to miss a single edition? Subscribe then subscribe to Winelife Magazine now!

Want to stay up to date with the best articles? Follow Winelife magazine on Instagram, Facebook and sign up for our fortnightly newsletter.