Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines | Page 7

of "celerer" should be one of importance. It
happened that about the year 1688 this office was conferred upon a
worthy monk named Perignon. Poets and roasters, we know, are born,
and not made; and the monk in question seems to have been a
heaven-born cellarman, with a strong head and a discriminating palate.
The wine exacted from the neighbouring cultivators was of all
qualities--good, bad, and indifferent; and with the spirit of 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 Vendôme 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