Dans ses travers sera-t-elle plus sage?
Pour fuir l’abus doit-on bannir l’usage?
Ah, je connais la pauvre humanité
Tout est jolie; et bien mieux que personne
Un buveur d’eau quelquefois déraisonne.”
I now come to Champagne wine. The quarrel which existed in the time of Louis XIV. between the Burgundy doctor and the Champenois, concerning the respective merits and defects of the wines of their different provinces, has been before alluded to. The Bourguignon maintained that Burgundy merited a preference over the wine of Rheims, for that these latter over-excited the nerves, produced dangerous maladies, such as the gout; and, in a word, that Fagon, first physician to Louis XIV., forbade their use to that monarch. The citizens of Rheims deemed themselves in duty bound to resent this insult, and the faculty of medicine of the town was charged with the task. The faculty, of course, maintained that the wines of Aï, Pierri, Versenai, Silleri, Hauvilliers, Tassi, Montbré, and St. Thierri, bore off the bell in the “top-loftiest manner,” as Sam Slick would say, from Burgundy; that they possessed a more limpid colour, a sweeter perfume, more body, and greater durability. The Bourguignon rejoined, that the courts of England, Germany, and Denmark, drank no other beverage than Burgundy; “and as to Champagne,” says he, “it owes its renown to the two ministers, Colbert and Le Tellier, who, as wine-proprietors, vaunted their own vineyards in the neighbourhood of Rheims.”
This was, however, a mistake. Colbert was, indeed, a Champenois, but neither he nor Le Tellier gave renown to the wines of Champagne. The vineyards of Champagne had been celebrated for centuries before they were born; and Francis I., Leo X., Charles V., and Henry VIII., had each of them a vineyard at Aï, with a resident superintendent. The other objections of the Bourguignon have more show of reason. “Champagne is a wine,” says he, “which is neither strong, nor full-bodied, nor generous. It is weak, insipid, and watery, liable to change colour, incapable of bearing exportation, or a long journey; whereas Volnay was drunk in Poland at the coronation of Sobieski, and Beaune was served at Venice by Comandante Morosini at the entertainment which he gave the senators after the conquest of the Morea, when it was considered one of the first wines of Europe.”
The champion of Champagne answered with an extract from a letter of St. Evremond to the Duke d’Olonne:—“Fussiez vous a deux cens lieues de Paris, n’épargnez aucune dépense, pour avoir des vins de Champagne. Ceux de Bourgogne ont perdu leur credit auprès des gens qui ont le goût délicat; et à peine conservent ils un reste de réputation chez les marchands.”
This vinous battle continued till 1741, when another question was started, viz. “Le vin de Champagne est il aussi salutaire qu’agréable?” It was à propos of this question that the Sieur Navier maintained twenty years later, in the schools of Rheims, that Champagne might be usefully employed in putrid fevers. But notwithstanding these pros and cons, the world went on pretty much as usual. Those who relished Champagne drank it, and those who preferred Burgundy swallowed their modicum of their favourite tipple without the least regard to the literary combatants. So it will ever be.
The department of Marne, in the opinion of most women, and of all boys, is the real and genuine vinous glory of France. I admit that if you find a Champagne of a really first-rate cru; limpid, neither too sweet, nor too sparkling, nor too spirituous; but brisk with body, vinous, and retaining these amiable qualities so as fully to develope them in the arrière bouche—that then you obtain a rare wine, and not to be despised. But how seldom, how very rarely indeed, is such a wine to be had!