In sparkling fancy while we drain the bowl;
The mellow-tasted Burgundy, and, quick
As is the wit it gives, the gay Champagne.’[285]
But, Port wine and prohibitions notwithstanding, men of fashion of that epoch were not entirely obliged to abandon their favourite potations, since five thousand hogsheads of French wine were surreptitiously landed on the south-west coast of England in a single year.[286] Fortunately, too, for them, the Government came to the conclusion that it was for the time being futile to fight against popular tastes, and in 1685 the obnoxious prohibition was removed, with the result that, two years later, the imports of French wine were registered as fifteen thousand tuns—that is, sixty thousand hogsheads.[287]
On the outbreak of hostilities with France in 1689, the import of French wines received a serious check, and as they vanished from the revenue returns, so Champagne began to disappear from the social board and the literature of the day. Strange to say, however, it was not only the favourite wine of William III., but of his dethroned father-in-law, James II. The red wines of the province of Champagne had always found a ready sale in Flanders and the Low Countries,[288] and quickened the minds of the stout seamen who fought against Blake and Rupert. The variety produced from the Beaune grape at Vertus was the one patronised by Macaulay’s pet hero, the hook-nosed Dutchman,[289] whilst the exile of St. Germain seems to have been more catholic in his tastes.[290]
Eagerly must the gourmets of the day, when, ‘if we did not love the French, we coveted their wines,’[291] have hailed the return of a peace which permitted them not only to indulge in their old favourites, but to welcome a new attraction in the shape of sparkling Champagne. The term ‘sparkling’ as applied to wine did not at the outset necessarily mean effervescing, as in one of Farquhar’s comedies we find Roebuck comparing himself to ‘a bumper of Claret, smiling and sparkling.’[292] Towards the close of the century, however, we meet with sure proof of the advent of the delectable beverage with which the worthy cellarer of Hautvillers was the first to endow droughty humanity. The contemporary dramatists were ever on the alert to shoot Folly as she flew. The stage was really the mirror of that time, and those who wrote for it seized on every passing whim, fashion, or fancy of the day. The introduction of a new wine was certainly not to be missed by them, and the recently discovered vin mousseux of Dom Perignon is plainly referred to in Farquhar’s aptly-named comedy, Love and a Bottle, produced in 1698, just after the Peace of Ryswick had allowed the reopening of trade with France.
The second scene of act ii. represents the lodgings of Mockmode, the country squire, who aims at being ‘a beau,’ and who is discovered in close confabulation with his landlady, the Widow Bullfinch:
‘Mock. But what’s most modish for beverage now? For I suppose the fashion of that always alters with the clothes.