Have an effervescent New Year’s!
Here’s how with Champagne. Part 1.
I’m no wine connoisseur, no wineologist, no viticulturist, no vinophile. I’m not able to tell the difference between super-duper expensive and more affordable wines—like if I tasted a 1982 Lafite Rothschild ($3,500) and compared it to a 2006 Charles Krug Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($30). Nor do I care. I don’t drink it.
But I do like champagne. It’s the only alcoholic beverage I imbibe. It’s the bubbles. They’re ticklish. Fun to swallow. When you pour champagne, playful foam rises to the top. It pops. It sisses. Fun to sip.
As a little kid, I drank Shirley Temples—at a restaurant, for special occasions. It made me feel special, too. Champagne has the same kind of whimsical quality to me. People may cry in their beer, rant over rum, whimper in whiskey, sob over scotch. But nobody in a bad mood ever says, “Boo hoo hoo, I feel like a glass of champagne.”
Are you ringing in 2010 with a glass of champagne? I can’t stay up until midnight. But sometime on New Year’s Eve—with GREAT anticipation—I will have my first glass of Veuve Clicquot. (Hopefully not with fish sticks, which is what I had on Christmas because all the Taco Bells were closed. Sheesh).
First, a little champagne history. The term champagne comes from a region of north-east France where a “sparkling wine’ was cultivated, which generically became known worldwide as “champagne.”
Some French history books (and P.R. firms) award “champagne invention” to a merry and thirsty monk named Dom Perignon in the Champagne Region in 1668. Other history versions credit the “invention” to the English in 1662, through an article by the British Royal Society. Still another version gives credit to monks in the south of France who made sparkling wine as early as 1531.
Monk Dom is credited with many discoveries essential to champagne making today:
1. To improve the quality, he noted that that different types of grapes should be mixed. To this day most of champagnes are made from his “recipe”— a combination of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay grapes.
2. He solved the problem of exploding bottles by using English glass and came up with the idea to add corks to bottles.
3. He added a secondary fermentation process to increase carbon dioxide, the gas that makes the bubbles bubble.
4. He realized that pressing grapes gently achieved the best quality. To this day, the pressure in a wine press is the same force as that which can be applied between a person’s thumb and forefinger.
5. He changed the harvest time for champagne grapes. Previously grapes were picked on the first day of summer. Dom decided that a later date would make a more elegant wine. To this day, the harvesting of grapes for champagne is done in September.
The prototype of our modern day champagne was formulated by Dom in 1690. When he tasted that first batch, he uttered the famous line, “Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!”
As a result of his good taste, champagne houses such as Taittinger, Moët, and Heidsieck, sprang up in France in the 1700s and created a lucrative industry. In 1772, Veuve Clicquot was founded. I’ll expand on this champagne in Part 2.
Second, the “celebration” history of champagne: For centuries, French Kings were crowned in the Cathedral of Reims in Champagne, France. Since sparkling wine was popular in this area, it became the beverage of choice at coronations.
Likewise, champagne was Napoleon’s beverage of choice. He insisted on traveling with several bottles at all times, including to and from battles.
Lastly, to commemorate the opening of the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1890, a friend of its builder, Gustave Eiffel, devised an elaborate celebration involving 200,000 bottles of champagne, which had to be transported in a wooden barrel pulled by 24 white oxen. Things did not go according to plan, but the tradition of using the tower for fun and remembrance had begun.
To this day local French people (and everyone else) climb the Eiffel tower toting their favorite bottle of champagne to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, marriage proposals, or any occasion. I would like to one day partake of this tradition. My occasion would have to be related to some writing accomplishment. I can’t see traipsing all the way to France for any other reason.
If on New Year’s Eve you’re splurging on a pricey bottle, raise your flute high, and toast like Monk Dom would have, “A votre sante!”
