I love bubbly. I can drink it first thing in the morning, just before I sleep, and at every intervening moment. Its racy freshness and cleansing bubbles inspire celebration, comfort the sad and refresh the weary. I have another name for Champagne: joie de vivre.

The region and its history are equally fascinating; from Dom Perignon and the lies the marketers have told us about him, to the wars that ravaged the region. So, over the next two columns, I am going to give a potted – although more likely pot-holed – history of Champagne.

Before we begin, a quick wine making lesson (the quickest possible). Wine is fermented grape juice. Fermentation is the consumption of sugar by yeasts, which produces alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Bubbles in Champagne were not always desired, in fact Dom Perignon, the “inventor” of Champagne, spent his life trying to get rid of the things. For him, they were considered a fault.

Grapes picked and pressed in the summer would start to ferment. As winter approached, the temperature dropped and those wines that had not finished fermenting would stop, as the temperature became too low for the bacteria to function. Champagne is further north so it got colder there earlier than the more southern wine making regions. This wine would be bottled and sent to wherever it was being sold. Come spring, the warmer temperatures would wake up the yeast, and fermentation would begin again. Now, normally while wine is fermenting, the by-product CO2 drifts away into the air, but bottled and corked, it has nowhere to go. This was a frustration to merchants as many corks popped off, or bottles exploded, as they were not strong enough to handle the pressure.

Dom Perignon became the business manager of the abbey of Hautviller in 1668. The place was a mess. Pillaged and rebuilt numerous times over the years, the Abby had seen better days. Shit, it had seen better centuries. Perignon was a super-smart guy, and he realised the vineyards the abbey possessed were of high quality and would have to play an important role if he was to turn the abbey around.

He knew that quality wine comes from quality fruit, and said that to make great wine, one must “Eliminate those [vines] that make nothing but common wine. Aim instead for quality that brings honour and profit.” As I said, smart guy.

But the one frustration he had was with bubbles. We have a lot for which to thank Dom Perignon. Perhaps not for inventing Champagne, but for setting down the golden rules of modern winemaking:

·      Use only the best grapes and discard those that are broken

·      Prune vines hard in the early spring to avoid over production

·      Harvest in the cool of the morning

·      Press the grapes gently and keep the juices from different pressings separate.

There are many myths about Dom Perignon, but we do know that he was a careful winemaker, and knew good wine must come from good fruit. The wines from Hautvillier were valued highly, and as such he was able to restore the place to its former glory.

How did this fastidious winemaker get lumped with inventing champagne? Well, Champagne producers are some of history’s most cunning marketers. During the depression following The Great War, Champagne sales were dire, so the Champagne producers decided to commemorate the 250 years since Dom Perignon “invented” Champagne. They cared naught that the 250 years was a completely arbitrary number, or that the same thing had been done 18 years before – that time it had been the 200th anniversary – when a newspaper reported that Dom Perignon had exclaimed “I have tasted the stars!” All pure fiction. Today Dom Perignon is best known for the name of Moët & Chandon’s prestige cuvee (a Champagne house’s top wine).

Back in Dom’s day, the wines of Champagne were still, red wines and a favourite of a man born in the same year as Perignon, the Sun King Louis XIV. He reigned as monarch for 73 years, and although there was a short time when Burgundy was the preferred royal wine, it was known that the wines of Champagne were the King’s favourite. Royals have always been trendsetters, and when the King declared Champagne his favourite wine, the nation followed.

The king was a rather sickly individual suffering from a wide range of ailments. Migraines, gout, and gastric ills were all suffered by poor Louis. The court took special interest in his health in the same way some fixate on Kate’s sister’s rear-end. So much so, his bowel movements were studied, recorded, and discussed. Once, a six-inch long worm was found in the royal stool. I’ll take Pippa’s bum thanks.

The point is that Champagne was prescribed as a general cure-all. And as long as the king was being treated with Champagne, Versaille would drink Champagne, and if Versaille drank Champagne, there was a very healthy market and the growers were happy as their grapes sold easily.

The royal physician who prescribed Champagne was one Antoine d’Aquin. But there was another physician, Monsieur Guy-Crecsent Fagon who coveted Antoine’s job; and with the help of Louis’ Mistress he managed to get himself appointed as the royal doctor. This depressed the King, as Fagon thought the Wines of Burgundy better and Louis was deprived of his favourite tipple.

This began an argument that would run for 130 years. Experts argued over the wines from each region. Top physician, Jean Baptiste de Salin, said the wines of Champagne “have no strength, none of the vigor people like to call generosity, they are weak, half hearted and watery, their colour is changeable and unreliable, and they cannot withstand transport.” This was too much for the Champagne supporters who promptly started a fist-fight with the Burgundians in the auditorium.

This war of wines finally ended when wine makers began to harness the bubbles that had plagued poor Dom Perignon. The wines of both regions began to take on the characteristics that we know today, and being so different there was little reason to argue. One commentator said, “Happy is the nation who never knows any other kind of war.”

In next week’s lesson we’ll cover how the bubbles were harnessed, have a look at a favourite painting of mine, and also see how the area of Champagne must be the bloodiest wine-growing area on the planet.

Homework: Three bottles of Champagne. Class dismissed.