It started out being viewed as a complete failure. What the bottlers of the French wine had imagined was a product that would be able to rival the wine from the bordering region to the south and that would appeal to their shared customers. Everything involved in the process of making the wine was done with great care and with complete attention to all of the elements that would affect the character of the wine. These included the quality and regional specifics of the soil, the careful pruning of the vines, the weather that each year presented, the careful harvesting and pressing of the grapes at exactly the right time, as well as the cellaring and maturing of the wine.
All could go well for the winemaker and yet there was the chance that when a bottle was finally opened, a spray of bubbles would erupt, and all would be lost. The bubbles were the result of an unplanned second fermentation process that would occur naturally if winter temperatures dipped low enough to stall the normal fermentation of the wine as the bottles cellared, but once warmed by milder spring temperatures, allowed the yeast to be reinvigorated, and the fermentation process to start up again. The result of this unplanned second effort was an in-bottle building up of carbon dioxide in the wine and the disappointingly ‘sparkling’ wine would be referred to as ruined.
And a spray of bubbles when the bottle was opened wasn’t the only bad scenario to fear. The French vintners were very used to having the pressure from the effervescence force the corks out of the bottles, or worse, cellared bottles would randomly explode from the pressure. If that happened, the exploded bottle was likely to set off a chain reaction in the wine cellar and 20% – 90% of the other bottles would also explode in solidarity. What a scene THAT would be!
Such was life in the Champagne region of France during the days of a Benedictine monk by the name of Pierre Perignon. Dom Perignon’s job was as the cellarer for his Abbey, and he made his mark there from 1668 until his death in 1715. He had grown up around grapevines, as his father’s family owned several vineyards in Champagne. Dom Perignon spent his life working to improve the quality of wine produced from the Abbey vineyards and in the Champagne region, and under his tutelage, his Abbey flourished and doubled the size of its vineyard holdings.
Remarkably, the British elite LIKED the wine when it ‘sparkled’. Typical. While Dom Perignon struggled to make ‘still’ wine, the wine makers in Britain were being taught how to actually ensure that the wine they bought from Champagne to rebottle, would be guaranteed to sparkle. It would take the French much longer to accept this obvious flaw in the wine from the Champagne region.
The remaining problem with this pressurized drink was with how to keep the corks in and the bottles from exploding. The British were able to lend a hand with this problem because at that time they had a lot of interest and experience in the processes used in making glass. Their glass was made using coal-fueled ovens rather than wood-fueled ovens, resulting in bottles which were stronger than the French ones and could withstand a good deal more pressure.
The solution for the problem with the corks occurred over several decades. During Dom Perignon’s time, common bottle stoppers were made from wood that was wrapped in linen soaked in oil and then tied onto the neck of the bottle using hemp twine also soaked in oil. The whole thing was then sealed with wax. Ew.
Corks had been used for bottle/vessel stopping historically but had fallen out of favour. They were rediscovered as terrific bottle stopper material and were to become the recommended material for wine stoppering by 1718, however they were still being tied onto the bottles with oiled hemp twine, which would sometimes cut into the cork stopper as it tried to force its way out.
Enter: the wire muselet. The first wire cages that were designed to hold the corks onto bottles of effervescent wine were invented in 1844 and consisted of a tin cap that was held on top of the protruding cork by 3 wires or strings that were then wrapped very tightly around the lip of the bottle. This was the start of a good idea, although it was very difficult to do and needed a sort of wire cutter to get off. Not ideal. Eventually, in an attempt to lever the wires to their tightest, a pre-formed loop was added and used to twist the wires tightly before being folded flat against the bottle for convenience. The customer would just need to untwist the wires, using the loop, in order to uncork the wine.
Even today, six twists of that loop are what it will take for you to loosen the muselet on your own bottle of Champagne or sparkling wine. Six twists will release the safe grip that the little wire cage (now with four wires holding the cap on instead of three) has on the cork, which in turn is protecting the sparkling effect that has made the wine from the region of Champagne famous throughout the world. Far removed from the scorn and disappointment of vintners like Dom Perignon who saw bubbles in their wine as a defeat, Champagne has gone on to established itself as an elegant and unmistakably celebratory choice of wine, beloved and admired by so very many.
In the end, it turned out that the very qualities that labelled that early wine product a failure, were the exact qualities that caused it to be embraced. There seems to be a lesson in there for all of us, doesn’t there?
Let’s raise our glasses and toast the New Year ahead, and may we also find a way to glimpse the silver lining of success within each of our own setbacks!
