Happy New Year!
It is fun to be writing again to you all after taking a few years off from sending out (hopefully) interesting paragraphs on subjects about both mortgage market intel and other topics.
I trust we will all experience a little more freedom in the New Year! Reminds me of not missing something until it is gone, or at least confined in some way.
And so to commemorate and celebrate:
Champagne History
Historian Amanda Foreman wrote in the 12/9/21 edition of the Wall Street Journal about this topic and I share some interesting points.
In 1891 with the Treaty of Madrid only sparking wines made in the Champagne region of France could be called champagne. Personally, I am at fault frequently because to me they are all “champagne”. In going to the liquor store I noticed the French champagnes start at about $50 per bottle (they just don’t last that long when I open them) so I drop down a few shelves to buy Italian Prosecco or American sparkling wines.
Anyway, there are sparkling wine references in many ancient writings, especially Roman, who added grape juice to wine to promote secondary fermentation. As you might imagine the pressure in the container would crack if sealed, or split wine skins, or release the pressure and so the bubbles would escape and not stay dissolved in the wine, eliminating the effect. So bubbly wine could not become readily available until the 1600’s when British scientist Christopher Merret brought re-fermentation into the public eye with his research and wine merchants had the benefit of British glass being stronger than French glass.
Notable names we may recognize:
Dom Perignon; cellar master in NE France from 1668 to 1715 who worked on creating fine still wines, not sparkling, stored in barrels.
Madame Clicquot; in 1811 created sediment free champagne and became wealthy exporting to the Russians (apparently the French preferred still wines).
American Nicholas Longworth: American wines developed with the discovery of the Catawba grape and Longworth, being rich already, became the Father of American “champagne” and by 1850 had shipped 60,000 bottles out of the Ohio River Valley.
The sparkling Catawba wine success dwindled with the Ohio climate rotting the vines and the Civil War stealing manpower, among other things.
The French had a bigger problem with a vine killing insect that crossed the Atlantic in 1860 and decimated the French vines and the Champagne region faced extinction until the French allowed the American rootstock of vines to be grafted onto French grapes which saved the vineyards. Apparently the American grapes were resistant to the insect killer.
To quote Amanda: “Champagne may have its heart in France, but its brains are British, its strength American, and its origins Roman. Cheers to one and all.”