And let's start our Champagne trip... with a little history! After all, how did winemaking in this region started?
Since long before being a region that produces bubbles, Champagne produced still wines, mainly reds, with its vineyards that were planted in Roman times, and production was established in the 9th century, when there was already a notion about viticulture and the special qualities. of the region's terroir. For many centuries, the region was the scene of wars and much destruction, but also with moments of glory and excellent harvests. Champagne has always been closely linked to Catholicism, and many monks and religious figures settled there and were part of the wine production.
As a result, the territory gained increasing visibility with the holding of baptisms of important members of the Catholic Church and royal coronations in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Reims (located in one of the main cities in the region) and also by the realization of trade fairs, the that made Champagne come into prominence more and more and become known. And the bubbles?! After all, they are the stars of our bottled gold... Well, continuing the story of the last publication: Champagne made excellent reds, but at a certain point they started to be compared to Burgundy reds, which in turn had a better balance of acidity and other more advantageous characteristics – we will cover each one in the next posts. detail of Champagne terroir, which has as a great characteristic, wines with remarkable acidity. Producers then felt the need to adapt, and began to invest in white wines. With that, they realized that producing white wines from their excellent red grapes (maceration without contact with the skin, thus not changing the tone or tannins), made an incredible wine with greater longevity. The fact is that during the fermentation of these wines, when the temperature dropped, the yeasts went into “hibernation” and as soon as the temperature rose in the spring... they woke up in a sudden and intense production of carbon dioxide (BUBBLES) and believe it or no... that was considered a defect! In other words: nobody “invented” sparkling wines... they are a natural fermentation process that has always existed.
Dom Pérignon – a dedicated and detail-oriented monk who was cellarmaster in the Champagne region – was one of the many people trying to prevent gas formation – and at that time there were already monks from Limoux (a French region well known for its sparkling wines) who produced the bubbles and they already used cork stoppers to seal the bottles... Pierre Perignon was very important for evolutions in the production of champagne later, with many studies on terroir and the improvement of the technique of blends – blends of base wines, but we cannot say like many legends out there, that he was the “father of champagne”. ” There is no “creator” of sparkling wine, but who started to purposely produce and market it... And many of the records point to a region that predated France: The English, who had the best glass to withstand the pressure of bottled carbon dioxide – which was a big problem, as many bottles in the Champagne region and many others exploded and all the precious liquid was lost... In other words, it took a lot of study and primordial discoveries for us to have these bottled stars.
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