We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
Champagne: How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About Champagne: How The World's Most Glamorous Wine
Product Description Throughout history, waves of invaders have coveted the northeast corner of France: Attila the Hun in the fifth century, the English in the Hundred Years War, the Prussians in the nineteenth century. Yet this region – which historians say has suffered more battles and wars than any other place on earth – is also the birthplace of one thing the entire world equates with good times, friendship and celebration: champagne. Champagne is the story of the world's favourite wine. It tells how a sparkling beverage that became the toast of society during the Belle Epoque emerged after World War I as a global icon of fine taste and good living. The book celebrates the gutsy, larger–than–life characters whose proud determination nurtured and preserved the land and its grapes throughout centuries of conflict. Review “Compelling… a lovingly written ode to this incomparable, festive wine.” -- New York Newsday on Champagne About the Author Don and Petie Kladstrup are former journalists who have written extensively about wine and France for numerous publications. Don, a winner of three Emmys and numerous other awards, was a foreign correspondent for ABC and CBS television news. Petie, an Overseas Press Club winner, was a newspaper journalist and more recently protocol officer for the U.S. ambassador to UNESCO. The Kladstrups divide their time between Paris and Normandy. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Champagne How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times By Don Kladstrup HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright ©2006 Don KladstrupAll right reserved. ISBN: 006073793X Chapter One The Monarch and the Monk They were born the same year and died the same year, and yet, they could not have been more different. One lived in absolute luxury, the other in abject poverty. One prided himself on his long, curly locks, the other shaved his head. One wore red high heels, the other simple sandals. One garbed himself in silk and velvet, the other in rough brown linen. But Louis XIV and Dom Pérignon had one thing in common: both loved champagne, or, more precisely, the wine that would become champagne. Despite their differences, no two individuals did more to launch champagne on its path to fame and glory. In the beginning, however, there was no such thing as champagne. Champagne was not a wine; it was a place, a region known mainly for fine, quality wool. If peasants had extra land, they sometimes planted vines and made wine to supplement their diets or earn extra income. Because that wine was so insignificant, it didn't even have a name. Instead, it was lumped in with other wines as "vins de l'Ile de France" or sometimes just "vins Français." Other times, it was labeled by the town or area it came from, such as "vins de Aÿ," "vins de la montagne," or "vins de la rivière." One thing it was never called was "champagne." Also, it was red, but not dark red. It was pale, more onionskin in color, a variable pinkish brown which people described as oeil de perdrix, or partridge's eye. More significant, there were no bubbles—not intentional ones, at least. Bubbles were considered a fault, something that ruined the wine and was to be avoided. Although the Romans had begun planting vines and making wine in Champagne around 57 B.C., it wasn't until the eleventh century that anyone outside the region paid much attention. That was when the son of a vigneron from Châtillon-sur-Marne was elected to the papacy, assuming the name Urban II. The new Pope did much to promote the wines of his native land, letting it be known that he "preferred them to all others." 1 (It was an open secret in Rome that the best way to gain an audience with His Holiness was to arrive with a quantity of wine from Champagne.) But there was something else the Pope did that enhanced the reputation of the region's wine even more: He launched the Crusades. Champagne was a patchwork of warring fiefdoms whose leaders ke
