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Profiter des délices de la région Champagne tout en maintenant une alimentation équilibrée est tout à fait possible.
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If not dom Perignon, then who added bubbles to champagne? Enter Christopher Merret (1614-1695), an English physician and scientist, founding member of the Royal Society, who was particularly interested in glass. Initially, the English made glass, as the French continue to do, with wood-fired furnaces, but when King James I advocated reserving trees for shipyards, they switched to coal-fired furnaces. Coal offered higher temperatures and, as a result, produced much stronger glass. In those days, wine was transported in barrels to England, where it was bottled and corked. All things considered, sparkling wine seems to have a more viable destiny on the English side of the Channel.
In 1662, Merret presented a memoir to the Royal Society entitled "Some Observations on Wine Ordering" (quoted by wine writer Tom Stevenson, b. 1951), in which he clarified the practice of adding vast quantities of sugar and molasses to the casks to make the wine more "lively" and " sparkling ". In contact with the sugars, the yeasts emerge from their vegetative state and release CO2. Not sure Merret really understood the process, but it's the first description of the reaction that triggers the second fermentation to produce foam.
It was also in Shakespeare's language that the first mention of sparkling champagne appeared. In an English Restoration comedy, The Fashionable Man, or Sir Flo-ping Flutter (1676), playwright George Etheredge refers to "sparkling champaign", which works wonders for the black mood of languid lovers and "drowns sorrows"... "which, alas, are back the next day"!
The English may have been the first to appreciate champagne's bubbles, but that doesn't mean they invented it. After all, it was the Champenois who made the wine with its sometimes unfermented yeasts. Can we talk of invention when champagne is the fruit of a hundred and fifty years of evolution? In the spirit of the Entente Cordiale, we'd say champagne is a Franco-English creation! Be that as it may, in Champagne, the transition from still wine to sparkling wine didn't happen overnight.
In the third edition of Dom Pérignon's posthumous biography, a note states that a "reliable witness" saw the monk enriching his wines with peaches, dried fruit and sugar to promote the setting of foam. Poor Pierre must have been turning in his grave! According to Raymond Dumay (1916-1999), author of the first wine guide: "He knew of no more dangerous enemy than a wine that 'worked', i.e. a wine that, in spite of everything, remained determined to ferment and form bubbles throughout its life." Sparkling champagne was considered diabolical, as a single bottle could break under the pressure of carbon dioxide, setting off a chain reaction in the cellar that destroyed hundreds of bottles, if they didn't explode in your face. Nor was it considered a serious wine: "the merit of foaming which, in my opinion, is a merit of small wine and the proper of beer, chocolate and whipped cream", wrote the merchant Bertin de Rocheret in 1726. Among connoisseurs, and most Champagne winemakers, this opinion would endure throughout the 17th century. At the court of Versailles and in the salons of London, the capricious nature of bubbles probably enhanced the wine's appeal. There's something random, even magical, about the fizz. Not to mention the suspense: when the cork is removed from the bottle, will the wine let out its last gasp, or will it gleefully gush forth? And, for some, the risk of the bottle exploding added to the thrill of excitement.
In England, champagne had its ambassador in Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis de Saint-Évremond (1614-1703), who went into exile in London in 1662. He was a friend of Charles II, who gamely appointed him Keeper of the Duck Island in London's St. James's Park, and granted him a pension of €300 a year - a fortune in those days.
But Saint-Evremond was no advocate of sparkling wine: for him, Champagne remained a still wine, whether red from the Pinot Noir on the slopes of the Reims mountain or Chardonnay from the excellent terroirs of the Hautvillers and Sillery high villages.
Nicolas Brûlart (1544-1624), Marquis de Sillery, and his family blend the harvest from their 50 hectares with those from other vineyards to produce a cuvée that can be considered the first brand of champagne - which is not effervescent. The cru was very popular in Great Britain, but to obtain a license, local contacts were needed, including Saint-Évremond.
In 1695, the still red wines of Champagne suffered a setback when Louis XIV's physician advised him to drink Burgundy instead. For the next 50 years, the Champenois fought a losing battle with the Burgundians over who would produce the best red wine from pinot noir. Some Champagne winemakers produced rosé wines with an "oeil-de-perdrix" or "pelure d'oignon" color, while others favored Pérignon's reduced pellicular maceration to obtain pale, limpid wines. As for accidental sparkling wines, the first mention of them comes in 1712, under the name "mousse argentine". At the time, it seemed inconceivable to enjoy these cursed bottles.
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