The old notion of enjoying Champagne only for special celebrations is passé. There has been a revelation with people enjoying bubbles every day and for any occasion. Marketers in France are promoting Champagne as an anytime drink to enjoy casually with burgers or pizza, and they are enlisting the help of popular music celebrities to attract new, younger consumers. Champagne organizations actively provide funding to promote Champagne as diligently as they fight to protect the legitimacy of “Champagne.”

Champagne is a sparkling wine region in France, and only those who grow and produce grapes in this region may call their wines Champagne. Crémant is the term other regions in France must use for their sparkling wine production. In Spain, the word cava is used, and in northern Italy, it’s prosecco. There are a few American wines that were grandfathered in for use of the name Champagne due to their long-time production.

Sparkling wine production was a happy accident. Fizziness in wine was originally considered a flaw. It was the English, not the French, who invented sparkling wine.

THE ENGLISH DICHOTOMY

Until the 18th century, wines made in the Champagne region were still wines. The French did not have the technology to make sparkling Champagne until around 1695. The English did have the technology and used it to make French Champagne still wines fizzy. However, the French wood-fired glass was too thin to withstand the pressure of sparkling wine, and the wooden bung closures were not airtight. The English made a coal-fired glass that was vastly stronger than the French, and they had access to corks, while the French did not at the time.

Dom Pérignon is credited with inventing Champagne in France. What we know is that he did invent the coquard press used for sparkling wine production and that he perfected the assemblage, blending grapes to produce a consistent and superior cuvée.

The French are geniuses when it comes to marketing, and when they quote Dom Pérignon as he tasted his bubbly creation, “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!” we accept this romantic bit of legend with a nod and a smile. Cheers.

Champagne Fun Facts:

1. Madame Clicquot invented the pupitres used for riddling Champagne bottles. She asked an employee to drill holes at an angle into her kitchen table so that the bottles would point down and be rotated to collect the yeast sediment for eventual removal.

2. Three of the most famous Champagne houses were run by women after they became widows: Madame Clicquot, Madame Louise Pommery and Madame Lily Bollinger.

3. Winston Churchill called L'Avenue de Champagne in Epernay “the most drinkable street in the world.” Because of the millions of bottles in cellars underneath the avenue, it is the most expensive insured street in the world.

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