Champagne: How the World’s Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times
From the time of Attila the Hun to
the Germans of World War II, waves of invaders
have tried to conquer the verdant region of
Champagne in northern France. Yet this strife-torn
land is also the birthplace of the world’s favorite wine: champagne.
In this engrossing history, Don and Petie Kladstrup show how this sparkling wine, born of bloodshed, became a symbol of glamour, good times, and celebration. It’s a story filled with larger-than-life characters:Dom P?rignon, the father of champagne, who, contrary to popular belief, worked his entire life to keep bubbles out of champagne; the Sun King, Louis XIV, who rarely drank anything but; and Napoleon, who, in trying to conquer the world, introduced it to champagne.
Then there were the generations of local vintners who struggled to keep their houses running. Claude Mo?t hauled his bottles to Versailles and gave Madame de Pompadour her first taste of bubbly, prompting her memorable quote, “Champagne is the only wine that lets a woman remain beautiful after she has drunk it.” There was also Charles-Camille Heidsieck, known as “Champagne Charlie,” who popularized champagne in America and ended up being imprisoned as a spy during the Civil War.
World War I would be Champagne’s greatest test of all, a four-year nightmare in which nearly everything the Champenois had worked and fought for was destroyed “in a rain of iron and fire.” German bombardment drove thousands of people underground to seek refuge in the huge cellars of the champagne houses, where among the bottles you would find schools, hospitals, shops, municipal offices, and troops.
Amazingly, grapes continued to be harvested even as bombs fell, and the wartime vintages are considered to be among the finest ever made.
An unforgettable history, Champagne will forever change how you look at a glass of bubbly.
Customer Review: An interesting angle on history
Champagne’s role in history - a fascinating read. I learned things I never knew before.
Unfortunately, some of the “facts” presented in the book seem to be stretches. For example, here’s a quote from the book:
“Champagne was a patchwork of warring fiefdoms whose leaders kept the province in constant turmoil….In 1095 Pope Urban declared “Let those who until now have been moved only to fight their fellow Christians now take up arms against the infidel.” With these words, the First Crusade began. His call for a holy war struck a particularly responsive chord with his fellow Champenois, as warlords and others put aside differences and set off for Jerusalem, accompanied by their armies and retinues.”
The book suggests this was the convenient excuse to invade another country — to prevent fighting among themselves at home.
Customer Review: Silly Nonsense
I found this book–which I finally threw down unfinished in irritation after the umpteenth faux “fact” was presented–trite beyond belief. I presume that a history is factual. This was not. The authors presented so much factually wrong, unsupported information and claims that I finally decided I could not justify spending more time reading it. For instance, they claim that both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette drank champagne with a last meal before their executions. Well, Louis did enjoy a fairly good meal–without champagne–before his execution. Marie Antoinette, however, was so brutally treated and degraded by her captors as the Widow Capet before hers that there most assuredly was no “last meal” for her, much less a champagne chaser. Her maid recounted the details of her prevailing upon her to eat a few mouthfuls of some vermicelli which she warmed up on her stove in her cell. If she drank anything it was water–likely from the nearby and very polluted Seine. Anyone offering her champagne would have most certainly ended up being arrested for royalist sympathies. With all the many fine sources out there on both of these executionsw, how can the Kladstrups get away with printing such trite, factually wrong drivel merely to add some silly patina of faux glamour to their thesis? Then they go on to describe the aristocrats being guillotined, describing how the victims were forced to kneel and put their heads on the block. Have the Kladstrups even the remotest familiarity with how a guillotine works?? There is no block. There is no kneeling. There is no cooperation by the victim whatsoever. Read any source on the topic. Yet again, the Kladstrups trot out rubbish which is not even factually close to correct. Their description of the executions of Desmoulins and Danton–whom they falsely claim were drunk and singing a drinking song as they awaited their executions–round out this litany of utterly fabricated nonsense by which they attempt to link champagne to just about every event in French history. So. With so much drivel and made up “fact”, how can one trust, much less enjoy, any of their other assertions in this so-called history? Definitely a candidate for recycling–or the outhouse.
The Old Wine Shades (Richard Jury Novels) THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER-NOW IN PAPERBACK 
