Champagne: How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times This instant

"Champagne" by Don and Petie Kladstrup is a brief and lively rendering of the history of the world's favorite white wine and its relationship to the history of France. The book's subtitle, "How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed over War and Hard Times," suggests the recurring themes of the book.

The authors introduce the reader to the region in France called Champagne and its people, known as Champenois, and begin to trace the many foreign incursions into the region by the Vandals and the Goths, the Romans, and Attila the Hun, noting that, "From time immemorial," as one historian put it, "Champagne has suffered an overdose of invasions."

They tell the story of the seventeenth century monk, Dom Pierre Pérignon, who is credited with "inventing" the bubbly wine we know today. From its humble beginnings in a monastery, champagne soon became the favorite drink of monarchs and royalty throughout Europe, favored by Napoleon, who spread its popularity as he carved out his continental empire.

By the nineteenth century, the grape growers and wine makers of Champagne were thriving as millions of bottles of champagne were exported to countries around the world. The houses of Clicquot, Heidsieck, Moët, Pommery, and Mumm became household names.

Then came the wars. Even wars in other countries hurt the Champenois. The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the U. S. Civil War before that caused numerous bankruptcies, "...all of which left champagne producers with stacks of unpaid bills." Then in 1870, hostilities came right to the doorstep of the Champenois with the outbreak of the Franco- Prussian War, the Prussians' big guns pouring thousands of shells every day on the vineyards and wine cellars of Champagne. Though brief, the Franco-Prussian War "... would be the bloodiest of the century." But somehow France came roaring back, and as the twentieth century began, the champagne industry was in high gear again.

The first decade of the new century saw changes in the law defining what could and could not be called champagne, and there was a violent tax strike in 1911, but the wine industry had fully recovered when World War I broke out in the summer of 1914.

Fierce bombardment by German guns forced the citizens of Reims to seek refuge in the vast limestone caves that housed the reserves of the champagne industry and a deep depression swept over the region as champagne-making came to a near standstill. Then, when the war ended, another crisis hit the vineyards in the form of a microscopic bug called phylloxera vastatrix, which affected all but a handful of Champagne's vines. Entire vineyards had to be uprooted and replanted, but by 1920, the industry was again on an even keel, and this is exactly when the United States Government enacted Prohibition. Ironically, smugglers and bootleggers were so successful during the period of Prohibition that more champagne made its way into the United States than ever before, by one estimate seventy-one million bottles reaching America's shores in those "dry" years.

Given the resiliency of the champagne industry over centuries, it is no surprise that the Champenois weathered the Great Depression and another world war with a German occupation of the wine-making region.

As the story ends, the authors, Don and Petie Kladstrup, cite an earlier writer praising the dead heroes of the Great War, whose crosses dot the landscape, and there, he says, "champagne will be celebrated once again."
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