The secret history of champagne

In the southern hemisphere, champagne season is a bit of a double-whammy since warm weather coincides with the bigger holiday celebrations. Spring, summer, racing carnival, wedding season, Christmas and New Year’s – they all add up to kind of a perfect storm for champagne consumption.

That’s why SuperLiving is breaking out the bubbly this week. With the season of sipping finally upon us, we thought we’d explore the mystique of this sumptuous indulgence, and find out what puts champagne in a class by itself.

Champagne seems to be a more intensely regulated substance that plutonium. Earlier this month, Australia finally signed an agreement with the European Union to no longer allow Australian-made sparkling wines to be called “champagne.” This leaves only a handful of nations that still permit the misleading labels, most glaringly the US.

To learn how strict quality controls have shaped champagne’s legacy, SuperLiving caught up with champagne expert Jayne Powell, aka “Champagne Jayne”.

Jayne is the author of the upcoming book Champagne – Behind the Bubbles and is a veritable encyclopaedia of all things champagne. She says champagne’s strict codes started out simply as a means of managing one of the first products to be traded between French villages. But with time, the regulations evolved to safeguard much more than just fair commerce.

“It became important to protect it from a commercial perspective because everyone was jumping on the champagne bandwagon,” she said, “but in terms of cultural heritage, champagne is actually protected as one of the national emblems of France.

“You’ve also got the fact that because of the nature of the soil, the chalk, the clay and the aspect of the different growing areas within Champagne, the wines really do taste quite different. It’s such a hard wine to make, if you actually manage to make it, it’s pretty darn good. And that’s been the case since the Romans because champagne was famous even in the time of the Empire.”

Jayne’s enthusiasm for champagne history is infectious. She effortlessly outlines the storied wine’s transformation from a royal coronation totem to a mass-marketed stalwart of true elegance. One arcane history exposes how the 19th-century locals of the Champagne region became the first counterfeiters of their own product by importing inferior grapes. Another proves the English were in fact the first to give champagne its trademark bubbles.

“With champagne, you’ve got two things,” Jayne said. “You’ve got La Champagne the area, which was invaded by armies from Attila the Hun to the German army in the first and second world wars. Then you’ve got champagne, the wine, which started off a red wine, then it became a white wine, then it started to bubble.

“Then with the industrial revolution, when they invented machines to help with the production of champagne, it became an industrial product.”

With industrialisation came marketing, and the reputation of champagne as the wine of luxury was gradually solidified.

“By the 20th and 21st centuries, champagne has all these links to French royalty, Karl Lagerfeld, fashion and that kind of stuff,” Jayne said. “That’s all about making an industrial product aspirational. What’s really interesting is how champagne has managed to become an icon of luxury and stay that way for hundreds of years.”

Jayne says this tale of packaging and image doesn’t dull the lustre of champagne. It’s simply the story of how an elite joy became available to everyone.

“It’s not about taking the gloss off champagne. I think champagne appreciation is about making it accessible,” she said “You may not be able to afford a flight to Paris or Hong Kong, but by god on a Friday night or a Saturday, don’t you deserve to have a bottle of champagne and share it with a friend or some loved ones?

“Champagne turns any moment into a celebration because it’s just got that pop of the cork and the bubbles bouncing in the glass. You put a glass under your nose before you drink it – if you can bear to be that patient. You can actually feel the bubbles coming up and tickling your skin.

“It puts me in a very happy space as soon as I see a bottle of champagne. When I hear the pop or see it in a glass, I’m already smiling.”

Champagne – Behind the Bubbles will be available in Australia this October. You can purchase advanced copies, autographed by Champagne Jayne, at her website champagnejayne.com.