The cultivation of vines in Champagne dates back to Roman times. Until the 17th century, these wines were highly valued. However at the time these were weakly colored gray wines that were badly aging in bad barrels. To preserve the flavors, they started bottling these early.
The result was that these wines with low alcohol and whose bottling was held at the spring equinox became naturally sparkling. The winemakers called the wine of the devil or leap-cap bottles because of exploding bottles or popping corks.
Dom Perignon, cellarer of the Hautvillers Abbey did not invent the foam in the seventeenth century as believed; he knew by cons in excellent technician and thanks to a rigorous selection of grapes to improve quality. Champagne owes him one of his golden rules, grapes assemblies. He practiced with talent extractions and collages, managing to stabilize the wines and keep their foam. Today, under a single name, there are a multitude of champagne, which the world was often imitated but never surpassed. Champagne is the second French word most known in the world.
The Champagne has established 6 main rules:
- Use the following grape varieties: chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot meunier
- Short size (mainly royat, chablis, Guyot)
- Maximum yield of grapes per hectare (kg / ha) decided each year by the lnterprofession
- Maximum performance of 102 liters for pressing 160 kilos of grapes
- Minimum level set each year
- Conservation in bottle for minimum fifteen months before shipping, 36 months for vintages