The first third of the seventeenth century was relatively peaceful in Champagne, one can but complain of a few uprisings on the eastern side of the region between 1614 and 1616, the result of the scheming Charles de Gonzague, the governor of the province, who allied himself with the Prince of Condé and the Dukes of Mayenne and Bouillon to oppose the regent Marie de Medici. But after 1630, the operations established by the French intervention in the Thirty Years War and the manoeuvres of Duke of Lorraine [1] transformed Champagne into a vast military base (138). Spain had taken positions in the north of France and the armies camped on the plains of Champagne. While the wine producing region did not see any fighting it did nevertheless suffer requisitioning and pillaging by Louis XIII’s troops until the Grand Condé was victorious at Rocroi in 1643. But this was just a prelude to the terrible misery in Champagne that was brought about by the Fronde uprising between 1648 and 1657. The Spanish in the Netherlands allied themselves with the Frondeurs. To oppose the threat that they posed to Eastern France Condé sent the troops of Baron d’Erlach, a Swiss nobleman, to Champagne in 1649. These were in fact German, Polish, and Swedish mercenaries who systematically bled Champagne for two years, leaving behind a catalogue of horrific crimes. A pamphlet of the time entitled La Champagne désolée par l’armée d’Erlach (Champagne devastated by Erlach’s army) contains horrendous accounts of pillage, sacrilege, and rape. Oudard Coquault, a burgher of Rheims, writes in his Mémoires that in May of 1649 the people of the mountain from Rilly to Villers-Marmery occupied the woods, and that in May and June of the same year, from the twelfth of the last to the tenth of June, a German colonel, of the name of Binet, ravaged the Marne River. Their base camp was in Ay, where in addition to ransoms of two or three pistols from each inhabitant, they demanded eleven thousand pounds before they left... This brigade holds all the villages in the area in fear, nobody dares go out in the fields for rear of being robbed.

D’Erlach’s ruffians [2] were succeeded by brigands led by Charles Oudard, a roofer known as Mâchefer, who arrived in the Marne Valley, downstream from Epernay, in 1651. In April 1652 Charles VI, the Duke of Lorraine, plundered Champagne with bands of mercenaries, numbering around 20,000, and extracted ransoms from all those that they could find. Coquault wrote this time, The villages have been demolished and are deserted: these are the fatal effects of war. Elsewhere he recounts how, returning from Hautvillers, he was ambushed by a band of Lorrains, robbed and held to ransom, and that at Chenay his vineyard worker was killed. Condé and his adversary Turenne then took it in turns to wage war in Champagne, and their troops showed no more consideration for the inhabitants than their predecessors. Coquault noted that Turenne’s soldiers have drunk and squandered more than six hundred "pièces" of wine [3] in Hautvillers alone ... these are not dogs sent by the king to protect his flock, they are wolves.

In 1659 the Peace of the Pyrenees finally brought Champagne the relief that it so desperately needed after the darkest thirty years in its history. Five years before, on 7 June 1654, Louis XIV had been crowned at Rheims at the age of sixteen. Coquault could finally write, Now, with peace and with abundance, we can rest. The countryside had suffered from the misfortunes of war even more heavily than the towns, enduring the destruction of villages and harvests, epidemics and famine. In 1648 the first President Molé, in the Remontrances to the Queen, had confirmed that the countryside was already no more than a desert. The cultivation of vines and transport of wines raised innumerable and constant problems. Coquault recounts that on the 24 September 1650, the army of Marshall Praslin was on the Mesneux and Sacy Plain and that they were harvesting and causing damage to the vines, and that on the 11 October of the same year the army returned to Sillery, pillaged and sacked what remained at Villers Allerant, so little was left of the harvest, which was whatever they could not eat, as to be nothing. As in the sixteenth century, and in similar circumstances, certain people did nevertheless benefit. The army of Flanders had bought wine in such quantities that prices had increased, to the general satisfaction of the merchants [4].

Malgré la paix, le logement des gens de guerre continue jusqu’à la fin du siècle, en raison des campagnes extérieures de Louis XIV. Les inconvénients qui en résultent, l’accroissement constant des impôts, la cherté de la vie, s’ajoutent aux misères accumulées pendant les guerres de religion, la guerre de Trente Ans et la Fronde. Dans les dernières années du XVII^e siècle, la condition du vigneron champenois est déplorable. On connaît le terrible texte de La Bruyère, écrit en 1689 : L’on voit certains animaux farouches, des mâles et des femelles, répandus par la campagne, noirs, livides et tout brûlés du soleil, attachés à la terre qu’ils fouillent et qu’ils remuent avec une opiniâtreté invincible... Ils se retirent la nuit dans des tanières, où ils vivent de pain noir, d’eau et de racines [5]. Et le même La Bruyère dit un peu plus loin : Le destin du vigneron, du soldat et du tailleur de pierre m’empêche de m’estimer malheureux par la fortune des princes ou des ministres qui me manque.

Despite the peace the billeting of soldiers continued until the end of the century because of Louis XIV’s external campaigns. The resulting inconvenience, constantly increasing taxes and high cost of living, added to the accumulated miseries of the Religious Wars, the Thirty Years War, and the Fronde. In the last years of the seventeenth century conditions for vine growers were appalling. The terrible text of La Bruyère, written in 1689 contains the following, One sees some shy animals, male and female, scattered throughout the countryside, black, livid, and quite sunburnt, close to the earth that they search and work with an indomitable stubbornness...In the night they withdraw to their dens, where they live on black bread, water and roots. And the same La Bruyère writes a little further on, The destiny of the vine grower, the soldier and the stone-cutter prevents me from considering myself unlucky that I do not have the fortune of a prince or a minister.

It is however difficult to establish a precise idea of the vine grower’s situation, we have already seen the consequences in this respect of the Hundred Years War. There is no doubt that generally speaking the peasants were unhappy, but for different reasons. The vine grower, despite La Bruyère’s dismal picture, was relatively privileged, because in those times vines offered a better yield than ploughing the soil. It was not unusual for him to own his land. He would also have had some livestock, and could charge vine owners in the towns for his services and skills, at a respectable rate [6]. Those who did not possess their own vines were tenant farmers according to types of agreements that were by now well established.

This would therefore suggest that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the only vine growers who really suffered were those in regions that, at some point or other, became directly implicated in military operations or rearguard manoeuvres, and, in the latter case, only for the periods, excessively long as they may have been, when troops were stationed or passing through. And so those in Basse-Champagne (the southern part of the province of Champagne, that includes Troyes, Bar-sur-Seine, Bar-sur-Aube, and Sézanne), which was more sheltered from this point of view, almost certainly had a better time of it than those in the Marne Valley and Haute-Champagne, between Marne and Aisne.

The fortune of the vineyard goes hand in hand with that of the vigneron (vine grower). During the difficult periods the areas of vines decreased; as soon as calm was restored the vineyards would make up their losses, at least the good ones would. There were also occasional restrictions imposed by the government or the local authority when it seemed necessary to boost the raising of livestock and/or the planting of cereal crops. In 1552 an order was given to pull up vines (243); in 1566 it was stipulated that in each canton a maximum of one third of the land could be planted with vines [7]. Overall the number of vines in Champagne has slightly reduced the fifteenth century.

By the end of the seventeenth century there were numerous grape varieties planted in Champagne, and we know the main ones from the texts of the period. Among white grapes, we find mainly Morillon (or Maurillon) Blanc [8], also called Maubard or Mauribard, Gouest (or Gouais) Blanc, Meslier and, in the Aube, Chasselas Doré (or Bar-sur-Aube Blanc) and Arbanne. For the black grapes we most often find Morillon Noir [9] and Morillon Taconné [10], but also Morillon Hâtif (early), known as Magdeleine, and the mediocre Gouest Noir. Jean Merlet notes that the, Morillon hâtif...is more curious than it is good... and much affected by flies, that the ordinary Morillon Noir ...makes better wine and that the Morillon taconné... is better than the earliest varieties and is excellent for making wine, crops well, and that the leaves are white and floury [11]. Finally there was a grape of intermediate colour, which was used to make wines that would vary in colour from white to red, depending on the intensity of the initial fermentation (when the skins are in contact with the wine) and the pressing: this was the Fromenteau or Frumenteau or Fromenté grape, known elsewhere as Griset, Enfumé, Avernas Gris d’Orléans, Burot, etc., and which Nicolas Bidet, officer of the King’s House, said in the eighteenth century was a very exquisite grape and well-known in Champagne [12] Liger describes it in the Nouvelle Maison rustique as a "grey-red", and adds, the bunches are fairly large, with dense seeds and tough skins, the juice is excellent and makes the best wine: it is to this grape that the much praised wine of Sillery owes its merit and its fame. Some varieties have been in the region for a long time, such as Morillon and Gouest, and are mentioned by Eustache Deschamps in his poems. Others have probably been imported from Burgundy from as early as the fifteenth century [13].

In Champagne at the beginning of the seventeenth century one finds, just as in the sixteenth, an indiscriminate mix of very ordinary white wines and red wines being produced from the same land. The reds were a significant part of the total volume and were naturally fairly light in colour, very clear verging on pale [14]. The adjective clairet or cleret is definitely used for red wines, and not for whites as some authors have mistakenly assumed. It was in use all over France and is the origin of the English word, claret, synonymous with the wines of Bordeaux. It applies to lightly coloured red wines, also called paillé (straw coloured)26 , or oeil-de-perdrix (partridge eye); such wines were painted in light tones by Georges de La Tour, in Le Tricheur à l’As de Carreau (The Cheat), by Chardin, in La Table, and by Lancret, in Les Rémois (The Inhabitants of Rheims). It was specified at the beginning of the eighteenth century that in past centuries it was the custom in this land to make so called red wines, which is to say ’oeil-de-perdrix’. It was thus an intermediate colour between rosé and red, that Olivier de Serres described as the colour of oriental-ruby (584). Towards the end of the eighteenth century, "oeil-de-perdrix" became synonymous with pink, and according to the Dictionnaire de l’Académie, in the 1798, was said of a wine with a slight red tint. This weak and somewhat random colour put the red wines of Champagne in a poor position relative to the wines of Beaune, which had a stronger colour and corresponded more to the tastes of the period, and were therefore easier to sell; with the result that it was common practice in Champagne to strengthen the colour of red wines

One would like to be able to say that in this period only the good wines were produced in Champagne that La Fontaine, a native of the region, describes in his tale Les Rémois: It is only listed what I prefer of Rheims : / The ornament of France’s honour,/ For, not counting the holy vial and the good wines,/ Charming objects there abound (328) (The holy vial contained the holy oil used to anoint the kings of France). Unfortunately if they were ever excellent it was unusual; documents from vine growers and merchants leave little doubt about the matter. We have seen how the vineyards suffered for two centuries. To the misfortunes of war must be added due to the caprices of nature. Jean Pussot, in his Journalier, records the numerous years of frost or drought that sometimes followed each other. In 1570, the vines in low places were badly damaged and did not yield very good wines; in 1587, there was hardly any wine and it was of poor quality, in 1588, there was little wine and of average quality. Many of the other years listed did not offer much better results; it would seem that every other year the wine was either of poor quality or of insufficient quantity, or both. It is true that this did not prevent some producers from making excellent wines that enjoyed, as we have seen, a good reputation, the problem was one of consistency.

We find in the L’Art de Bien Traiter, a New Work, of Curiosity and Elegance, that the wines of Burgundy and Champagne are good when the years are good, and principally the wine of Champagne when it has this liveliness that some rakes so esteem, when it is clarified quickly, when the wine is worked more than the level of its natural strength, for one should not be so proud of the type of wine that is always furiously bubbling in its vat, by Easter it should be finished, if later then beware, often after such storms and repeated excitement, it is decided: What? nothing, all its fire produces nothing but a highly displeasing and indigestible green wine , which gives strange discomfort to the bosom [15]. Note that some have imagined this to be a description of sparkling wine, but that in fact it is simply wine fermenting in a barrel, put incidentally on a par with that of Burgundy. The work from which this is taken was written twenty years before the sparkling wines of Champagne first appeared.

One also finds, in a treatise of 1718 that the people of Champagne, either through delicacy of taste, or a desire to profit further from their wines, or an ease for improving them, have been at all times highly industrious to make them more exquisite than those of the other provinces of the kingdom. But this tract, entitled Manière de cultiver la vigne et de faire le Vin en Champagne (The Manner of Cultivating Vines and Making Wine in Chamagne), and unsigned, is the work of a canon of Rheims, Jean Godinot, whose opinion may well have been influenced by love of his native land, and in any case, only valid for a limited volume of wines of quality. In reality many wine producers sold fairly poor wines, through habit and negligence, or in order to attempt to gain a rather variable profit by preferring quantity over quality.

It was still the case in Champagne that vines were cultivated and wines made in much the same way as in the rest of France, with similar and not particularly original results. But now a technical innovation appeared that was to strongly influence the evolution of the region’s wines, giving them a lead on those of other regions, and opening the way for the appearance of bubbles in champagne. Having trouble competing with Burgundy’s red wines, the Champagne wine producers found a way of using their black grapes to make white wines which were much superior to those that they had been making with their white grapes, and which had never been very well liked. Still in the eighteenth century, in the Spectacle de la Nature, an excellent work that appeared without the name of the author but which came from the pen of abbot Pluche, we find, white grapes in truth only give a white wine which is commonly without strength or quality, which quickly becomes yellow, and must be drunk before the summer.

It is possible to make white wine from black grapes, because their pulp and the juice is actually white. It is therefore necessary, to avoid the skins colouring the juice, to harvest carefully, not to press and macerate the grapes as in the past had always been done with red and white wines alike [16] , and to adopt an appropriate pressing technique. One can thus obtain a white wine, known as vin gris (grey wine) [17] in order to distinguish it from wine made from white grapes, this vin gris, so lively to the eye, which has a purity and a sparkle like that of crystal, and which comes from the blackest grapes [18]. It was to become a huge success, so much so that other regions of France tried to do the same, especially in Bordeaux [19]; but we must imagine that the results were not as good as in Champagne, for Béguillet wrote in 1770 that, with the exception of Champagne, all the white wines that are made elsewhere are made with white grapes [20].

Before anything else the bunches destined to be made into grey wine were subjected to special attention. Vines were selected for small grapes, and the white grape varieties were eliminated which according to Olivier de Serres, were crossing with the black vines. For a wine to be exquisite, wrote Canon Godinot, the grape varieties must be well chosen, and they should mostly produce small black grapes. For the wine to be refined, it is necessary to remove all the varieties which produce white grapes and those which produce large black grapes [21]. In the best vineyards they pruned short, with a view to improving quality, which was already the trademark of wine production in Champagne. There are two sorts of vines grown in Champagne, known as high vines and low vines. High vines are those which are left to grow in the less fine places and which are four or five feet high; the low vines are allowed to grow to a height of three feet. The high vines produce a lot and often give seven or eight pieces of wine for each arpent; the low vines produce little but the wine is much more delicate, they often only give two pieces of wine per arpent [22], sometimes less, rarely four [23].

The harvest of these precious grapes was carried out using truly innovatory techniques. Everything was done to pick them intact, to shelter from the heat, and to keep them this way until they reached the press, for any bruising, or the start of any fermentation, would colour the juice. Not only did the right day for harvesting have to be chosen, but the also the right moment during any such day.

Canon Godinot is explicit: One must endeavour only to harvest on days when there is plenty of dew; and in hot years after a little rain, when one is happy to have it. This dew gives the grapes an exterior bloom, that is called ’azur’, and inside a coolness, which means that they do not heat up too easily, and that the wine is not coloured. The harvest should be begun half an hour after sunrise; and if there are no clouds and it becomes hot at around nine or ten o’clock then harvesting should stop. If the sky is overcast the harvest can continue throughout the day, because the grapes will keep well in the cool. In wet years, take care not to put any spoilt grapes in the baskets; and in all weathers be sure to remove bunches that are rotten, damaged, or completely dry; but never take the grapes off the bunches.

But it hard to match the Spectacle de la nature when it comes to taking precautions during the harvest:

The pickers arrive in the vineyard early in the morning and choose the most handsome grapes. They should be laid gently in their baskets, and placed with even greater care in the ’hottes’ (larger baskets) [24] to be carried to the foot of the vine, where, without the slightest bruising, they are put in the large baskets, keeping the bloom and the dew with which they are covered. Mist can contribute greatly, as much as dew, to the whiteness of the wine. If the sun is hot then spread damp cloths over the baskets, because if the grapes should become warm then the wine can take on a red colour. These baskets should be loaded onto animals of a peaceful nature who will carry them slowly and without shaking them, to the cellars where they can be covered and kept cool [25].

Every detail is important. Canon Godinot specifies that the grapes should be cut with a small curved knife, very cleanly, and with as little stem as possible, this last requirement being made so as to avoid the "wood" in the bunches of grapes giving the wine an unpleasant flavour. Maupin wrote that the sap from the stem being essentially coarse, earthy and hard, as it is, could only bring bitterness and harshness to wines which contained it. Bidet adds that one should prefer scissors to pruning knives, because they do not shake the vine, and more easily cut the stem close to the grapes, and that this is an extremely important point, because the stem is bitter and the length left on the bunch will be in proportion to the taste of wood in the wine.

It is evident that in the production of vin gris the harvest is an operation of which the total success depends on the great speed with which it must be carried out, failing which the wine will be tinted [26]. It would have been unthinkable to hurry along the animals who were carrying the grapes, who above all had to be be kept calm. Bidet wrote that if mules were as common in Champagne as in mountainous regions then this would be a great advantage at harvest times: everyone knows that this animal carries its burden without shaking or tossing it, which is why it is preferred over horses for the transport of litters, but failing a mule, one should give preference to donkeys over horses, as they are calmer [27]. It is thus obviously of interest to have the presses close to the vines, as Canon Godinot remarks, when the presses are close to the vines, it easier to prevent the wine from taking colour, because the grapes can be carried properly and with care in little time; but when they are two or three leagues away, one is obliged to put the harvest in barrels... and can hardly avoid that the wine has some colour, except in cold and wet years.

Presses were communal; only owners of large vineyards would have their own presses. There were various models, but the most common was the pressoir étiquet of which the screw, moved by an external calander, turned directly on the press surface made up of joined beams on which rested the mouton, a heavy iron weight, and so called because originally the screw was tightened with the help of a stick known as an étiquet. This was the press that best satisfied the requirements of this new type of pressing based, as we have seen, on the constant principle that the juice must be extracted without being coloured by the skins. This does not pose a problem at the start of the operation but, as it continues, the must builds up and takes on more colour. From this came the idea of splitting the pressing operation and producing different grades of wine with various degrees of colour and finesse.

Canon Godinot describes this in some detail: the first time that the great beams are lowered onto the grapes, the resulting wine is called the Vin de goute31; this is the finest wine, containing all that is most exquisite in the grape; this wine is too slender and lacks body: this first pressing is called the ’Abaissement’. It must be done with much dexterity and speed, first in the lifting of the beams, and then the constant adding of more grapes, which run down the sides and all around, back into the middle, loading quickly, and pressing the same a second and third time. These other two ’Abaissements’ are called the first and second ’taille’ (cut) [28], and must be completed in less than an hour, if the wine is to be properly white, because the grapes will not have had time to become warm, or the juice to remain in contact with the marc.

Usually the ’Vin de l’Abaissement’ is mixed with that of the first and second cut; rarely is it mixed with the third, depending on how hot or cold the year is: and the result is called a ’Cuvée de Vin fin’. There are skilled wine makers who say that the Vin de l’Abaissement should only be mixed with the first cut, because it is so much more delicate than the second and third cuts, and that they can always be mixed later assuming that they are fine enough and white enough. .

Canon Godinot describes further on that subsequent abaissements give a fourth cut known as the Vin de taille, with more colour than that known as ’partridge eye’, a strong wine, smooth and pleasant, a good ordinary wine, and three other cuts which make up the Vin de pressoir, which is very red, fairly rough, but adequate for servants. He explains that when one is not pressed, one should leave a good hour and a half between each of these last three cuts, as much as to give the wine time to flow imperceptibly, as to let the press workers sleep or rest, for their fatigue is severe, given that they must work day and night for about three weeks.

We thus see the appearance of the concept of separating ’vins de cuvée’ and ’vins de taille’, which is still applied in today’s champagne presses.

While perfecting the processes that would enable them to obtain a perfectly white must [29], the wine producers of Champagne also endeavoured to improve the techniques involved in the subsequent stages in the making of their vin gris. Abbot Pluche says peremptorily: lees [30] and air are the two plagues of wine and confirms that in Champagne the wine is decanted twelve times into perfectly clean barrels, in order to remove the lees. To make the various manoeuvres involved in these operations easier a system of drawing off (soutirage35)was invented using bellows and a specially made pipe; a full barrel was connected to an empty barrel with the pipe, the wine from the first would flow into the second due to the principle of communicating vessels and the remainder would be pushed out by the bellows, which would be applied to the bung hole (bonde36) of the barrel to be decanted [31]. Due to this technique the wines kept much longer. One reads in the Journal des Sçavans of 7 June 1706, that now that the secret of drawing the wines to make them clear has been found, the wines of Champagne can go all over the world, for they keep as well as the wine of Falerne [32].

Abbot Pluche confirmed this in 1744 with the following very clear account: nowhere have I seen a degree of care that approaches that which has been taken in Champagne for around fifty years. Its wine had previously been considered very fine and much valued, but it did not hold up well, and could not be transported very far. Long experience has enabled a more robust wine to be produced, without it losing any of its quality, that keeps six or seven years and often much longer. The wines of Aï used to last barely a year, but now that white grapes have been excluded from the wines of Champagne, that of the Montagne de Rheims lasts eight to ten years, and that of the Marne will easily last five to six. The wines of Burgundy would not falter, as they do, after the third, or often the second year, if the same precautions were taken when they were made.

The fact remains that while wines were well made and kept much better, they still ran the risk of deterioration in the casks, since the wood did not provide sufficient protection during long maturing or transport over long distances. These problems were resolved by the use of bottles becoming widespread. At the beginning of the seventeenth century bottles were fragile and usually had a wickerwork covering; they were rarely used for anything more than the journey from the cellar to the table [33]. But in Champagne the advantage of the air tightness of bottles with regards to keeping wine started to be appreciated in around 1670. Wine thus began to be drawn [34] into "potbellied" bottles in small quantities, which were sealed with a broquelet which was in turn fixed with string to the bottle’s neck. Broquelets were wooden pegs wrapped in flax tow and greased with tallow, of varying sizes, and which were used to stop barrels as well as bottles. And then from 1685, the improvement of bottle sealing with the use of corks from Spain [35]resulted in the practice of bottling being adopted by some of the better wines, but it was not until the end of the century that the glass makers of Argonne, imitating those in England, managed to make a thick, dark glass that enabled the transportation of Champagne’s wines in bottles to any destination. In the Journal des Sçavans of the 7 June 1706 it was reported that a modern traveller claims to have drunk wine from Champagne in Siam, and in Surinam.

The inhabitants of Champagne, due to their ingenuity, were thus at the origin of numerous innovations, none of which, it should be noted, are credited to particular individuals. However, their wines were to benefit from a new improvement of which the inventor is well-known. This was the assemblage or blending of grapes as was first practised by the cellar master of the Abbey of Hautvillers, Dom Pierre Pérignon. Located on the northern slopes of the Marne in Epernay, the wine of Hautvillers was not a new arrival in Champagne. It was cited in the thirteenth century by the trouvère, Henri d’Andeli. If it then seemed not to enjoy particular fame amongst its neighbours on the river, one can be sure that its wines were often sold under the more well known names of Ay, Epernay and even of Rheims. The Benedictine Abbey of Hautvillers had been established in 662 by Nivard, the bishop of Rheims, who wanted to associate himself with the spiritual renewal of the time, the foundations of which had just been laid by Saint Colomban. Ten centuries later the monastery was pursuing its activities in the service of God and men when Dom Pérignon arrived, in 1668, as procurator. He is gifted with a happy intelligence, a charitable character, and a good understanding of business, wrote an anonymous author of the nineteenth century, and René Gandilhon described him as diligent in his work, determined and even tenacious, with a concern for perfection in research, going hand in hand with a simple and honest nature.

Amongst Dom Pérignon’s duties were the management of the vineyards and the production of wine. He was effectively the abbey’s cellar master, a role which he fulfilled until his death at the age of seventy-six in 1715. He did an excellent job. Having taken over ten hectares of fairly poorly tended vines he handed on to his successor a domain of twenty-four hectares, hugely improved in terms of quality and general condition. To give his wines consistency and excellence he further developed the concept of assemblage or blending by introducing a new technique. Blending was already practised in various forms. As we saw, concerning vin gris, wines that came from the different categories of must obtained at pressing were usually mixed. It was also common practice amongst wine merchants to carry out coupages, or mixing of wines from different areas. Roger Dion even even sees this as the reason for the unification under the term vins de Champagne the wines of the Marne valley and the Montagne de Rheims. But it was less usual to find blending at the grape stage. We know that in the sixteenth century vines bearing white and black grapes were often mixed in the same vineyard and that the grapes were then mixed on the press, but by the end of the seventeenth century this practice had become frowned upon. Dom Pérignon’s innovation consisted of, before pressing, a systematic blending of the grapes of various origins and not just from a single vine, whether they had been harvested in different parts of the abbey’s estate, or whether they had been received in the form of tithes from a few of the surrounding villages, who paid in wine, in grapes or in cash. Dom Pérignon thus had a choice of grapes available that he could carefully mix on the presses that the abbey possessed in Hautvillers, Champillon and Dizy, in order to harmonize their qualities and smooth out their faults.

Abbot Pluche gives the following account which was reproduced by Maupin in his Méthode.

It was the knowledge of the fine effect produced by the grapes from three or four vines of different quality that brought perfection to the famous wines of Silleri, Aï, and Hautvilliers. Also, it had to be agreeable that all the various qualities that could flatter the palate seemed to be united. Father Pérignon, the Benedictine monk from Hautvilliers sur Marne, was the first to successfully blend the grapes from different vines in this way.

And here we have a description of Dom Pérignon’s technique from Brother Pierre, his pupil: Father Pérignon did not taste the grapes in the vineyards, even though he visited them almost every day as they approached maturity, but he would have some grapes brought to him from the vines which he had selected for the first blend, and he would taste them the next morning on an empty stomach, after they had spent a night outside his window, judging the taste according to the years, but he did not rely only on this for the composition of the blend, but also considered the weather, if the harvest had been early or late, if it had been cold or rainy, and if the vines had had plenty of leaves, all of these factors serving as guidelines for his distinguished blends. Dom François was to say later that this unique man preserved until decrepit old age a delicateness of taste so remarkable, that he could taste a grape and say with unerring accuracy the canton which had produced it.

This new technique gained Dom Pérignon a place in history, and entries in guides and dictionaries such as the following that appeared at the end of the eighteenth century: Dom Pierre Pérignon, Benedictine monk, born in Sainte-Menehould, died in 1715, rendered great service to the Province of Champagne by demonstrating how different types of grapes should be combined in order to make the delicate and valued wines for which he became famous [36]. It is a fact that this wise and modest monk gained a reputation within his lifetime that was out of proportion to his contribution to wine making and must be attributed to the range of eminent qualities that he displayed as a man and as a priest as well as a cellar master. Concerning his wisdom the Mercure de France of November 1727 declared that this monk that one might take to be a gourmet in fact never drank wine and lived almost entirely on milk and fruit. And as Brother Pierre said, we must rely on the principles of someone who had a special talent and, informed by long experience, has acquired the glory of having given the wines of Hautvillers the exceptional reputation that they enjoy everywhere. Dom Pérignon’s reputation was a guarantee of quality for the abbey’s wines.

The Marquis de Puysieulx wrote on 23 September 1690 to Adam Bertin du Rocheret [37]: I would like two excellent casks of Marne wine. I think that of Hautvillers is better than any other. Please ask the Prior of Hautvillers and Dom Pierre Perignon, the Procurator of the monastery, for them on my behalf, and please give them my compliments. Comte d’Artagnan, another of Adam Bertin du Rocheret’s customers, wrote to him on 9 November 1715: Monsieur the Marquis de Pizieux, who arrived yesterday, told me that Father Pérignon has died; who was much spoken of during his life; I would like you to think of me for the abbey’s first wines, for, frankly, they are the best.

Dom Pérignon was thus famous during his life, and well beyond the Champagne region. the poet Regnard, his contemporary, mentions him in his Epitre XI :

I keep you with care, better than my inheritance,
Of an exquisite wine drawn from the presses of this monk
More famous in Hautvillers than the defender of
Rabelais’ vaunted vineyard ever was.

As further testament to his popularity, the cellar master of Hautvillers features in a list of the best places in Champagne, from the pen of Claude Brossette, a commentator on Boileau, who in a note to the third satire (Le Repas Ridicule, The Ridiculous Meal), commits a gross error by citing Dom Perignon as a wine producing area rather than a person! He wrote that the most famous slopes producing the wine of Champagne are those of Rheims, Pérignon, Silleri, Haut- Villiers, Aï, Taissy, Verzenai, and Saint Thierri.

Here is what can be found on the subject in Abbot Pluche’s XIV dialogue in his Spectacle de la Nature: The Knight: Yesterday reading Despréaux’s feast, I found all the names of which Monsieur has just spoken. I then went to look for Pérignon and Silleri on the map, which are mentioned in the note: but I had a fine time trying to find Pérignon.
The Countess: That wag has mistaken the man for a mountain: it’s a silly little mistake.