History Flashcards
How was named, since the 9th century, wines made in the Montagne de Reims?
And those from Vallée de la Marne?
Since the 9th century, wines from the Montagne de Reims south of the city had been known as vins de la montagne.
Those from the Marne Valley as vins de la rivière, or river wines.
When was set up the Commission de Châlons? From who?
And when was formed the CIVC? How it impacted the Champagne region since 1980?
Approximately, when was found the first co-op in Champagne? How co-op develop since 1960s?
The civil riot events of 1911 (due to the delimitation for the better Champagne sites, which last battle was imputed to the initial exclusion of Aube départment) shook the whole winemaking community, and 25 years later the resulting desire for common action resulted in the combined group of growers and merchants known as the Commission de Châlons, set up in 1935 under the impetus of the remarkable Robert-Jean de Vogüé, head of Moët, and Maurice Doyard who was able to rally the growers. At a time when growers were virtually giving away their grapes, the Commission provided them with some stability.
Six years later, the desire for joint action led to the formation of the CIVC, the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, to provide winemaking regions with an organization which represented all the interests involved.
For 60 years from 1950, the region enjoyed unprecedented prosperity with sales peaking in 2007 at almost 340 million bottles.
Traditional export markets, such as Britain, the United States, Belgium, Japan, and Switzerland, took increasing quantities.
Nevertheless the French market has long consumed far more champagne than all export markets and accounts for two-thirds of sales. This emphasis had important structural implications, since the traditional brands were less dominant in the domestic market than outside France, where they still account for over 90% of sales. In the domestic market, nearly half total sales are made by individual growers, co-operatives, and co-operative unions.
The first co-operatives in Champagne were founded just before the First World War.
They grew rapidly in the early 1960s and by 1989 the region’s 140 co-operatives represented over half the growers and a third of the area under vines.
When was defined the strict rules to protect the term Champagne?
1927.
A. Briefly describe the resume history which brings to the glory of Champagne wines on the British XVIII century market.
B. Briefly describe the bad side of the Champagne’s history.
A. Historically in the Champagne, cold weather halted fermentation, which then restarted in the spring. If the wine had been bottled, the carbon dioxide produced by this second fermentation often shattered the bottle. But if the bottle resisted, the result was a sparkling wine more or less similar to modern champagne. For a long time, the Champenois considered such a wine to be faulty, going so far as to call it vin du diable, or ‘devil’s wine’. The British, in contrast, acquired a taste for this accidentally sparkling wine and successfully introduced it to the court at Versailles, then under the regency (1715–23) of Philippe II, duc d’Orléans. The Champenois rose to meet the increasing demand for the sparkling wine, but found it difficult to control the process and could not source bottles strong enough to reliably withstand the pressure. The solutions to these problems came not from Champagne, but from across the Channel. (1) In 1662, Christopher Merret presented a paper in which he correctly maintained that any wine could be made sparkling by the addition of sugar prior to bottling. (2) English glassmakers of the 17th century used coal- rather than woodfire ovens that yielded stronger glass and stronger bottles. (3) The English rediscovered the use of cork stoppers (lost after the fall of the Western Roman Empire), which provided an airtight closure to seal in the sparkle. In 1668, Dom Pérignon became cellar master at the Benedictine Abbey at Hautvillers (in the heart of Montagne de Reims district). By improving methods, he perfected the wines that would become sparkling champagne, advocating, among others, aggressive pruning and smaller yields, early morning harvesting, the rejection of bruised or broken grapes, and rapid pressing to minimize skin contact. However, he regarded sparkling wine as faulty, and even recommended the use of Pinot Noir to reduce the tendency to sparkle. Until the early 19th century, champagne producers did not remove the lees from the bottle. While this preserved all the sparkle, it could make for a cloudy and unpleasant wine. The veuve (‘widow’) Cliquot and her cellar master solved the problem by developing the process of riddling, which involves gradually moving the lees into the neck of the bottle and then ejecting it under the pressure of the wine. The small amount of wine lost through riddling came to be replaced by a variable mixture of sugar and wine called the dosage, which then as today determined the final style of the wine. Throughout most of the 19th century, champagne was very sweet, instead today the trend is for brut champagne wines.
B. In the wake of phylloxera and a succession of poor vintages, riots erupted in January 1911. Some producers had been making faux champagne with grapes from outside the region, and the Champenois growers intercepted the trucks conveying this fruit and dumped it into the River Marne. To pacify them, the French government attempted to delimit the Champagne region, but the exclusion and then inclusion of the Aube led to further riots that might have degenerated into civil war had it not been for the outbreak of World War I. The Great War wreaked destruction on buildings and vineyards, and many Champenois took refuge in the crayères (chalk cellars) normally used to store and mature their wines. The Champenois had barely begun to recover from the wounds of war when the lucrative Russian market was lost to the Bolshevik Revolution, and then the US market to Prohibition. The Great Depression also hit sales, as did the advent of World War II. Since the end of World War II, champagne has been in ever increasing demand. This has led to a quadrupling of production to ~330m bottles a year, but it has also led to a great number of imitators throughout France, Europe, and the New World, and, back home, to a controversial expansion or ‘revision’ of the Champagne delimited area.
When Dom Pierre Pérignon became cellar master at the Benedictine Abbey of Hautvillers (heart of the Montagne de Reims)?
1668.
