Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines | Page 7

a true Benedictine, Dom Perignon hit upon the idea of "marrying" the produce of one vineyard with that of another. He had noted that one kind of soil imparted fragrance and another generosity, and discovered that a white wine could be made from the blackest grapes, which would keep good, instead of turning yellow and degenerating like the wine obtained from white ones. Moreover, the happy thought occurred to him that a piece of cork was a much more suitable stopper for a bottle than the flax dipped in oil which had heretofore served that purpose.
The white, or, as it was sometimes styled, the grey wine of the Champagne grew famous, and the manufacture spread throughout the province, but that of Hautvillers held the predominance. To Dom Perignon the abbey's well-stocked cellar was a far cheerfuller place than the cell. Nothing delighted him more than
"To come down among this brotherhood Dwelling for ever underground, Silent, contemplative, round and sound, Each one old and brown with mould, But filled to the lips with the ardour of youth, With the latent power and love of truth, And with virtues fervent and manifold."
Ever busy among his vats and presses, barrels and bottles, Perignon alighted upon a discovery destined to be most important in its results. He found out the way of making an effervescent wine--a wine that burst out of the bottle and overflowed the glass, that was twice as dainty to the taste, and twice as exhilarating in its effects. It was at the close of the seventeenth century that this discovery was made--when the glory of the Roi Soleil was on the wane, and with it the splendour of the Court of Versailles. Louis XIV., for whose especial benefit liqueurs had been invented, recovered a gleam of his youthful energy as he sipped the creamy foaming vintage that enlivened his dreary têtes-à-têtes with the widow of Scarron. It found its chief patrons however, amongst the bands of gay young roysterers, the future roues of the Regency, whom the Duc d'Orléans and the Duc de Vend?me had gathered round them, at the Palais Royal and at Anet. It was at one of the famous soupers d'Anet that the Marquis de Sillery--who had turned his sword into a pruning-knife, and applied himself to the cultivation of his paternal vineyards on the principles inculcated by the celerer of St. Peter's--first introduced the sparkling wine bearing his name. The flower-wreathed bottles, which, at a given signal, a dozen of blooming young damsels scantily draped in the guise of Bacchanals placed upon the table, were hailed with rapture, and thenceforth sparkling wine was an indispensable adjunct at all the petits soupers of the period. In the highest circles the popping of champagne-corks seemed to ring the knell of sadness, and the victories of Marlborough were in a measure compensated for by this happy discovery.
Why the wine foamed and sparkled was a mystery even to the very makers themselves; for as yet Baume's aerometer was unknown, and the connection between sugar and carbonic acid undreamt of. The general belief was that the degree of effervescence depended upon the time of year at which the wine was bottled, and that the rising of the sap in the vine had everything to do with it. Certain wiseacres held that it was influenced by the age of the moon at the time of bottling; whilst others thought the effervescence could be best secured by the addition of spirit, alum, and various nastinesses. It was this belief in the use and efficacy of drugs that led to a temporary reaction against the wine about 1715, in which year Dom Perignon departed this life. In his latter days he had grown blind, but his discriminating taste enabled him to discharge his duties with unabated efficiency to the end. Many of the tall tapering glasses invented by him have been emptied to the memory of the old Benedictine, whose remains repose beneath a black marble slab in the chancel of the archaic abbey church of Hautvillers.
[Illustration: THE VINEYARDS AND ABBEY OF HAUTVILLERS. (p. 14)]
[Illustration: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MESSRS. CHARLES FARRE & CO., AT HAUTVILLERS. (p. 15)]
Time and the iconoclasts of the great Revolution have spared but little of the royal abbey of St. Peter where Dom Perignon lighted upon his happy discovery of the effervescent quality of champagne. The quaint old church, scraps of which date back to the 12th century, the remnants of the cloisters, and a couple of ancient gateways, marking the limits of the abbey precincts, are all that remain to testify to the grandeur of its past. It was the proud boast of the brotherhood that it had given nine archbishops to the see of Reims, and two-and-twenty abbots to various celebrated monasteries, but this pales beside the enduring