Her wings with Champagne.’[121]
Replying to an invitation to Sonning’s house at Neuilly on July 20, 1707, he says that when he comes it will be wonderful to see how the Champagne will be drained from the tall glasses known as flutes.[122] That the Champagne he extols was a sparkling wine is established in a poetical epistle to Madame D., in answer to her complaint that the wine he had sent her did not froth as when they supped together, and in this he also speaks of its newness.
His brother-rhymster, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, who must not be confounded with the philosophic Jean Jacques, invited Chaulieu to join him at Neuilly, in mingling the water of Hippocrene with the wine of Hautvillers,[123] and announced to the Champagne-loving Marquis d’Ussé, apropos of the latter’s favourite source of inspiration, that even
‘Phœbus will no more go climbing
For water up Helicon’s mount,
But admit, as a source of good rhyming,
Champagne excels Hippocrene’s fount.’[124]
Such general attention did the subject attract that Frederick William II. of Prussia actually proposed to the Academy of Arts and Sciences at Berlin the question, ‘Why does Champagne foam?’ for solution. The Academicians, with unexpected sharpness, petitioned the King for a supply of the beverage in question on which to experiment. But the parsimonious monarch was equal to the occasion, and a solitary dozen of the wine was all he would consent to furnish them with. His ally, Augustus the Strong of Saxony, was the hero of a ludicrous adventure connected with sparkling Champagne. At a banquet given to him at Dresden, a page, who had surreptitiously appropriated a bottle of this costly beverage, and hidden it in the breast of his coat, had to approach the King. The heat and motion combined had imparted briskness to the wine, out popped the cork, and the embroidered garments and flowing periwig of Mr. Carlyle’s ‘Man of Sin’ were drenched with the foaming liquid. The page fell on his knees and roared for mercy, and the King, as soon as he recovered from his bursts of laughter, freely forgave him his offence.
The success of Dom Perignon’s wine caused a revolution in the wine-production of the province, and gave rise to numerous imitations, despite the outcry raised against sparkling wine by many gourmets, and even by the wine-merchants themselves, who complained that they had to pander to what they regarded as a depraved taste. The elder Bertin du Rocheret, father of the lieutenant criminel and a notable dealer in wine, was much opposed to it.[125] Marshal de Montesquiou d’Artagnan, the gallant assailant of Denain, had ordered some wine of him, and he writes in reply, on November 11, 1711: ‘I have chosen three poinçons of the best wine of Pierry at 400 francs the queue, not to be drawn off as mousseux—that would be too great a pity. Also a poinçon to be drawn off as mousseux at 250 francs the queue; or, if you will only go as far as 180 francs, it will froth just as well, or better. Also a poinçon of tocane of Ay to be drunk this winter—that is to say, it should be drunk by Shrovetide—at 300 francs the queue: this wine is very fine.’[126]
On the 27th December 1712 the Marshal writes: ‘With regard to my wine being made mousseux, many prefer that it should be so; and I should not be vexed, provided it does not in any way depreciate its quality.’ On the 18th October of the following year the stern laudator temporis acti describes how the bottling has been carried out, ‘in order that your wines might be mousseux, without which I should not have done it, and perhaps you would have found it better, but it would not have had the merit of being mousseux, which in my opinion is the merit of a poor wine, and only proper to beer, chocolate, and whipped cream. Good Champagne should be clear and fine, should sparkle in the glass, and should flatter the palate, as it never does when it is mousseux, but has a smack of fermentation; hence it is only mousseux because it is working.’