Wine-growing has always been a favourite industry in this part of France. The vineyards extend over the Rheims hills and along the valley of the Marne. In the hilly country around Rheims there are two distinct growths of wine: the Montagne proper, with its famous Verzy, Verzenay, Mailly, Ludes, Rilly and Villers "crus," and the Petite Montagne with its secondary "crus" of the Tardenois Valley, Hermonville Hills, St. Thierry, Nogent l'Abbesse and Cernay-les-Reims. The Montagne produces more especially black grapes for white wines.
Champagne wines were famous as far back as the 16th and 17th centuries. Henri IV. had a marked preference for the wines of Ay. The magnitude of the cellars still to be seen in the 16th and 17th century houses testifies to the importance of a trade, whose main outlets were Paris, Flanders, Belgium and Germany.
The Champagne wines of that period were red, and rivals of the famous Burgundy wines.
The vogue of Champagne wines as understood to-day dates back to the end of the 17th century. It was Dom Pérignon, cellarer of the Abbey of Hautevillers, near Epernay, who, if not actually the inventor of sparkling wines, first undertook to perfect them by blending the "crus" and preparing them with greater care.
In the last years of the reign of Louis XIV., and still more so under the Regency, the use of Champagne at Court gained ground, especially at the tables of the Duc de Vendôme and the Marquis de Sillery.
At that time Champagne was merely a "creamy" wine, i.e. semi-sparkling. The low breaking strain of the glass of those days would not have allowed of the higher pressure (six atmospheres) of the present-day wine. The discovery of the chemist François, who in 1836 at Châlons invented a special "densimeter," made it possible to calculate the amount of carbonic acid gas contained in the must, and to proportion the expansive force of the wine to the strength of the bottles, thus reducing losses by breakage, which for long had been very serious.
From the 19th century onwards, the production of Champagne wine has grown unceasingly. The number of bottles of sparkling Champagne placed on the market for sale in France and abroad rose from 19,145,481 (of which 16,705,719 went abroad) between April, 1875, and April, 1876, to 33,171,395 (of which 23,056,847 went abroad) between April, 1906 and April, 1907. During the first ten months of 1915, the exports of Champagne and sparkling wines were 630,140 wine-quarts, as against 1,092,660 wine quarts in 1914.