Champagne is so much in this word. This is not only a drink with bubbles for any celebration, there is an amazing story hidden in it, in the champagne.
This is what the post will be about today.
Speaking of champagne, in one way or another, some kind of madam and widow come to mind.
Clicquot, for example. Have you heard about this? Probably heard, but only within the framework of the name of that very champagne. And why it is called that and who these are all sorts of widows or ladies, we will figure it out in more detail.
Champagne widows
The history of champagne is almost mystically associated with French widows. Among them are the legendary Madame Clicquot, the no less legendary Madame Pomery, Camila Roederer and another Madame Bollinger.
These women have had a tremendous impact on the technology and tradition of making champagne.
Let's talk about one of them. About Madame Clicquot.
In the French region of Champagne, there are now about 84 thousand people. hectares of land are planted with grapes, there are also known 340 champagne houses and... almost 16 thousand producers of ordinary wine.
But there was once a time when the wine industry in this place hardly kept afloat. The miracle happened at the moment of the breakthrough, which happened largely thanks to Madame Clicquot.
It is her Veuve Clicquot winery that is still famous all over the world.
Wine and, moreover, champagne Barbet-Nicole Ponsardin, and that was what she was originally called, did not take up immediately, since she came from a family of a textile industrialist. And it all started with marriage, in 1798, when Nicole married François Clicquot, heir to a small winery in a Champagne village.
The winery brought in a certain income, about 60 thousand rubles were sold annually. bottles of wine. Not champagne.
Happiness and business collapsed in 1805 when her husband François died of typhoid fever. Madame Clicquot remains a widow at the age of 27. At that time, she had a little daughter, Clementine, in her arms. What to do? Trust fate and live on the inheritance of your husband? No, Madame was not an ordinary housewife. An incredible plan ripened in her head.
The father-in-law becomes an investor of those ideas, although entrusting a business to a woman in those years was a failure, but he believed her and now Madame Clicquot dramatically changes her life. She gives up embroidery and playing music, hires a good nanny, and goes to the vineyards, where she invents the equipment that winemakers still use today.
For example, a rack for future champagne bottles. And not only this.
A young widow, Madame Clicquot, is quickly turning into a champagne trendsetter. She tries different and impossible in order to get something new and make money on it.
Making champagne requires a mixture of different wines and grapes. It is almost always collected in different years, since it is unrealistic to collect the required amount of high-quality raw materials in one year.
Clicquot turned the world of winemaking upside down by creating the first vintage champagne. Recall, to be considered a vintage bottle, the grapes for such a drink must be harvested in one year. Only one year and one season!
This means that this year should be fruitful. For Madame Clicquot, it came in 1810. And she does it - the first ever vintage champagne made from 1810 grapes. It was incredible, like the event or invention itself. It was then quite expensive.
But the businesswoman did not stop at her achievements and created the first rosé champagne in history.
Of course, the Ruinart champagne house produced rosé champagne back in 1764, much earlier than Madame Clicquot, but they added elderberry to the sparkling drink for color.
The lady did not bother and was the first to make rosé champagne by mixing aged red wine with young sparkling wine.
Rosé champagne is still prepared in two ways: by mixing wines, as Madame Clicquot did, or add the juice of red grapes with the skin to the finished champagne and remove it from the drink after a few hours. No dyes!
Genes matter, and the successors of the Clicquot sparkling business were also very inventive.
All champagne bottles have a wire bridle. Why is she? And who invented it?
The bridle is correctly called the muselle and its standard length is 52 cm.
According to legend, it was invented by a great fashionista and a fan of champagne Josephine Clicquot, she is the same continuer of the famous dynasty of Clicquot winemakers.
Once Josephine showed experts another creation of her winery. Namely a bottle of delicious champagne.
And so the very copy for tasting was solemnly brought into the hall filled with guests.
Josephine took the bottle in her hands and immediately realized that there was a problem with the cork and it was about to jump out of the neck. The lady guessed that she could not hold her, and the precious test drink right now with power will splash on the luxurious dresses of the invited ladies and possibly spoil the pomaded hairstyles of famous men.
Of course, she didn't need an unpleasant impression from the tasting.
And now the bold and mischievous Josephine Clicquot, in front of the amazed audience, puts her hand in her neckline and... pulls the wire out of his corset and immediately deftly clogs a bottle of champagne with it, wrapping the cork so that even with a strong shaking it does not budge.
This is the very bridle or muzlet.
About the foil on the neck
It was not there before. But... Then it became mandatory. How did the foil appear there? It's simple: from necessity to tradition.
Initially, the foil around the champagne cork served as protection from the mice and rats that lived in the cellars where the wine was kept.
The corks were filled with wax, and mice and rats chewed it. They managed to gnaw out ordinary corks. And the foil scared them.
Later, the packaging element was preserved as a tribute to tradition.
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This material belongs to the author of the "Culinary Notes on Everything" channel, that is, to me, and it was previously published by me personally in my blog channel on the platform Pulse.
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