III.

/Invention and Development of Sparkling Champagne./

The ancients acquainted with sparkling wines--Tendency of Champagne wines to effervesce noted at an early period--Obscurity enveloping the discovery of what we now know as sparkling Champagne--The Royal Abbey of Hautvillers--Legend of its foundation by St. Nivard and St. Berchier--Its territorial possessions and vineyards--The monks the great viticulturists of the Middle Ages--Dom Perignon--He marries wines differing in character--His discovery of sparkling white wine--He is the first to use corks to bottles--His secret for clearing the wine revealed only to his successors Frère Philippe and Dom Grossart--Result of Dom Perignon's discoveries--The wine of Hautvillers sold at 1000 livres the queue--Dom Perignon's memorial in the Abbey-Church--Wine flavoured with peaches--The effervescence ascribed to drugs, to the period of the moon, and to the action of the sap in the vine--The fame of sparkling wine rapidly spreads--The Vin de Perignon makes its appearance at the Court of the Grand Monarque--Is welcomed by the young courtiers--It figures at the suppers of Anet and Chantilly, and at the orgies of the Temple and the Palais Royal--The rapturous strophes of Chaulieu and Rousseau--Frederick William I. and the Berlin Academicians--Augustus the Strong and the page who pilfered his Champagne--Horror of the old-fashioned _gourmets_ at the innovation--Bertin du Rocheret and the Marshal d'Artagnan--System of wine-making in the Champagne early in the eighteenth century--Bottling of the wine in flasks--Icing Champagne with the corks loosened 34