History of Champagne

The First Sparkling Wine

The earliest examples of sparkling wine were due to faults that occurred everywhere wine was produced. They would have been the result of an unwanted refermentation or possibly even malolactic conversion. None of these faulty wines were fully sparkling, and most were probably not even remotely nice. They would have been as welcome then as a fizzy Bordeaux first growth would be today. Occasionally, a pleasurable fizzy wine might be noted, possibly because it was still quite sweet—and so the myths of extraordinarily early sparkling wines would begin.

But to understand the emergence of Champagne’s sparkling wine, it’s important to first consider the development of the region and its earliest, still wines.

Emergence of the Champagne Region

Prior to Roman invasion, Gaul consisted of a number of small, ill-defined Celtic kingdoms (Credit: Cristiano64, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-3.0)

Before the Roman conquest of 57 BCE, the region known as Champagne today did not exist. It was merely part of what the Romans called Gallia Belgica, the most northerly segment of a fragmented group of Celtic kingdoms known collectively as Gaul, representing an area roughly equivalent to that of present-day France. To the Romans, Gaul was Gallia Comata, or “Hairy Gaul,” so-called because the Gauls wore their hair long and grew thick, droopy moustaches.

Gaul and Gallic are not only synonymous with France and French