Celebrating Europe: An Asian Journey

8. Champagne France

8 Champagne France The programme for the trip to France in 2004 included an “optional” visit to the House of Moët & Chandon in the Champagne region. As the highway from Paris branched off into Epernay after two hours on the bus, rolling acres of vineyards and fairy-tale villages captured the view. The bus arrived at the company’s headquarters, where the travellers from Asia were greeted by presence of a statue of Dom Perignon. Born Pierre Perignon in 1640, he entered the Benedictine Order at the Abbey of Saint-Vannes in Verdun at nineteen, and, when only twenty-eight, was appointed cellar master at the Abbey of Hautvillers. Stories that his blindness enhanced his tasting faculties are discounted today, as is the famous line that, on tasting the sparkling champagne that he had just invented, he declared: “Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!” Indeed, he did not invent champagne. But what this remarkable viticulteur possessed were special blending skills; apparently, he was also the first person to keep the sparkle in the wine by putting it in reinforced glass bottles and sealing it with Spanish corks. In the late 1920s, Moët & Chandon invoked his name for its tête de cuvée.1 Although the champagne no longer owes its allure to being in very short supply always, the 110 Celebrating Europe Benedictine monk has become immortal in the enological imagination. As my fellow-journalists and I alighted from the bus at Moët & Chandon’s headquarters, we found standing, next to Dom Perignon’s bronze statue, a fragile, feminine, and very French mortal. She was from the company’s communication and heritage department and welcomed us with a mysterious smile to a tour of the premises. Her lispy tongue transformed the wine of English into the champagne of French. Thus, it would not do to say that wines were being fermented in underground cellars. “The grapes are sleeping in these caves,” she whispered dreamily and looked at us. We agreed, and lowered our voices. Champagne is, of course, not produced or made: It is created. So, too, was Moët & Chandon created and not established, according to a grand press kit we received that raised an historical toast to its mystique. In 1743, Claude Moët founded His House, which soon began supplying the royal and princely courts of France. The House of Moët became a favourite of the king’s favourite, Madame de Pompadour, who proclaimed that champagne was “the only wine that leaves a woman beautiful after drinking”. Monsieur Moët dutifully despatched 120 bottles to the Château de Compiègne every May, on time for the court’s summer sojourn there. Later on, La Maison Moët also became the official supplier to the royal houses of England, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark, as well as to the Vatican. The destiny of the House of Moët blossomed as the founder’s grandson, Jean-Rémy, acquired vineyards abandoned since the Revolution of 1789 and improved facilities for pressing grapes, fermenting the juice, and bottling the wine. Jean- Champagne France 111 Rémy Moët befriended the future Napoleon I, to whom the Brut Impérial would be dedicated, and Napoleon Bonaparte paid his first imperial visit to Epernay on 26 July 1807 on his return home after signing the Treaty of Tilsit. When the Franco-Prussian War of 1814 exposed the Epernay cellars to merciless Prussian and Cossack looting, Jean-Rémy declared prophetically: “All these officers who are ruining me now will make my fortune in the future. Those who are drinking my wine are also travellers who will spread the name of my House when they return to their countries.” On 31 August 1816, Jean-Rémy’s Moët’s daughter married Pierre Gabriel Chandon de Briailles, creating Moët & Chandon. The tour was over; we had not awakened the grapes. We made our way to the nineteenth-century Château de Saran, the family home located on the fringes of the Côte des Blancs, in one of the premier Chardonnay-growing districts of Champagne. There, the House entertains guests in the splendour of rooms that look out on serried rows of vines inhabiting a sleepily wooded hillside. We were received by our host, a man from the communication and heritage department whose regal bearing suggested that he, too, could have been founded...