Champagne

Champagne as a sparkling wine, its elegance and its undisputed class are intimately linked to the production area, the Champagne. In this area over the centuries the production method has found its definition "Champenoise”By refermentation in the bottle, which then spread all over the world, starting from different vines but also with the same grapes used in Champagne.

It was Dom Pierre Pérignon, Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Hautvillers, the first to make wine and keep the grapes coming from the various vineyards separate, believing that every single vineyard (cru) had its own unique qualities. Furthermore, its strict rules on the cultivation of vines had the aim of drastically reducing yields to increase the concentration of wine. However, even Dom Pérignon did not at all want his wines to become sparkling: like every winemaker of the time, he considered the development of the foam as an indicator of errors committed during production. It also seems that it was Dom Pérignon if not to invent, certainly to perfect the assembly of wines in cuvées, that is to vinify the grapes from different vineyards separately. However, the "sparkling wines" had taken hold and, given the impossibility of avoiding the resumption of fermentation, the Champagne producers used the effervescence to produce a wine different from all the others and which was already enjoying good commercial success .

The cloudiness of the wine due to the refermentation in the bottle was initially resolved by decanting the Champagne until the sediments were eliminated, however, by dispersing the effervescence and obtaining a flat wine without bubbles. It was only in the early 1880s that an employee of the famous widow Clicquot developed the system still known today as rémuage, that is, the rotation of the bottles to make the sediment slide towards the neck and eliminate it more easily. The strong acidity and hardness of the wines then made it necessary to add a "liqueur de dosage”To make them more harmonious, so in reality the first Champagnes were much sweeter than they are today. The improvement of production techniques also increased the quality of Champagne and progressively its sweetness decreased until the first brut was obtained in the mid-19th century. Although initially the "dry style" was not understood, it ended up affirming itself and today the versions demi-sec And doux they are definitely not very widespread.