Champagne veuve godart & fils

Le champagne et sa région | Historique | Les premiers pas

The birth of champagne

For a long time, the English, who bought wines from the Champagne region in casks (the transport of wine in bottles remained prohibited until 1728), had been in the habit of adding sugar and treacle to make sparkling wine, which they stored in thick bottles that were sealed with a cork stopper.

The natural appearance of this sparkle was, of course, observed by the people of Champagne, who did not know whether they should encourage it or hinder it. Some of them then tried to master this technique by taking an interest in bottling, or by selecting grapes that seemed to favour the creation of a sparkle.

The intentional production of sparkling champagne wines developed at the beginning of the 17th century. Dom Pérignon's idea of blending either grapes or wines became common practice, and much research was carried out to resolve the problems of deposits and bottle breakages.

Champagne then became known under different names that qualified its sparkling nature, the most common of which was the "Grand Mousseux" or "Saute-Bouchon" (cork popper) and the "Demi-Mousseux", whose bubbles disappeared rapidly.

18th and 19th cent vines

Champagne sparkling wine thus went through a period of great success, but it was still not being sold on a large scale, and only involved a limited production area, despite the success of the "vins gris" (wines intermediate in colour between white and rosé or pink), which led to an increase in planting during the 17th and 18th centuries.

For many of the Champagne region's people, the vine was the main resource, with 50,000 hectares of vines being cultivated in accordance with ancient methods, either in "lines" or in "crowds" (vine stocks in disorder). The Champagne vineyard was to become concentrated around a few geographical poles: Bar sur Seine, Bar sur Aube, the Marne Valley, the Montagne de Reims and the Côte d'Avize.

In the 18th century, specialists admired Champagne wine production, because in the "grand crus" (great vintages), the search for quality was ever present, particularly in the choice of vine types.

Moreover, the efforts deployed to protect the vine were considerable, and led to the introduction of technical advances:

1860: the introduction of shelters made of straw, as well as the use of artificial smokes to combat the frost.
1890: the introduction of a mechanical device, carried on the back, used in the struggle against diseases.

The champagne participants

The vine growers:

In the 18th century, the vine growers' situation remained precarious.The vine remained very vulnerable, (1,789 hard frosts, 1,835 outbreaks of oenophthira pilleriana, 1,869 outbreaks of blight) and the region's economic fluctuations affected the wine producers first and foremost.
Some of them had become owners at the time of the Revolution thanks to the abolition of ecclesiastical and noble estates, but estates remained small and divided, and therefore not very profitable.

During the 19th century, the vine disappeared in places where only red wine was produced, and even though the land increased in value little by little, the vine growers preferred to sell the product of their harvests to the merchants, rather than making their own wine.
From the end of the 19th century onwards, the vine growers began to group together in syndicates.

The merchants:

After the revolution, certain people set up extended estates on the best "terroirs" (vineyard sites), and still wine merchants in particular increased in number.
The commerce was concentrated around Reims and Epernay, and some commercial companies, some of which still exist today, came into being during the 18th century, and their vocation then developed from buying and selling to the production of sparkling wines.

It was not until the end of the 19th century that the production and sale of Champagne, as it was called from then on, took on large dimensions. The commercial companies prospered, and new champagne houses quickly became very well known.