Champagne Book

The lack of an exclamation mark at the end of the title indicates that Maggie McNie's Champagne is no frivolous millennial celebration of bubbly but a serious study of the wine, its history and its makers. One of Faber and Faber's useful series on the major wine regions, it is shorter than some of its companion volumes, but thorough nonetheless. The history of champagne is complex and fascinating. It originated as a still "grey" wine brought, by an accident of geography, to the attention of the various contenders for the ownership of France as they tramped back and forth over this crossroad of Europe and found its wine to their taste. The wine acquired its modern character in the late 17th century, when the famous monk Dom Perignon developed techniques of purification, blending and, crucially, introduced the second fermentation that introduced the bubbles. Recent sensational revelations that the ancient Romans had in fact beaten him to it in the sparkling wine stakes seem unlikely to tarnish champagne's reputation. Now no wedding or lottery win is complete without it. It has become a signifier of wealth and success. Maggie McNie's survey covers the great marques as well as a selection of the most interesting of the thousands of producers crammed into the region. She includes a vintage chart and concludes with an account of the Grandes Dames, those remarkable 'Champagne widows', from the Veuve Clicquot in the early nineteenth century to the present-day Mme Duval who took over Duval Leroy in 1991 on her husband's death. Excellent reading. -- Robin DavidsonRead More