Champagne Day Trip by Private Charter

Champagne's earliest wines were still and red; the bubbles came much, much later.

The Romans planted the first vineyards in what is now the Champagne region, drawn by the chalky subsoil and gentle hillsides. For centuries, the wines produced here were still, not sparkling, and predominantly red. The region's proximity to Paris and its position on major trade routes gave it an early commercial advantage over rival wine-producing areas.

Champagne earned its royal credentials at the coronation table, centuries before anyone thought to trap a bubble.

Louis the Pious was crowned at Reims Cathedral in 816, establishing a tradition that would see nearly every French monarch crowned in the city. The association between Champagne's wines and royal ceremony began here. Local wines were served at coronation banquets, cementing the region's reputation as the drink of kings long before a single bubble appeared.

He never made champagne sparkle; he made it worth drinking.

The Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon took charge of the cellars at the Abbey of Hautvillers in 1668. Contrary to popular myth, he did not invent sparkling champagne. What he did was transform winemaking in the region: pioneering the blending of grapes from different vineyards, improving pressing techniques to produce a clearer white wine from red grapes, and advancing the use of cork stoppers. His contributions to quality were immense, even if the famous quote about drinking stars was invented two centuries after his death.

The oldest champagne house still pouring was founded nearly three centuries ago; commerce and bubbles have been inseparable ever since.

Nicolas Ruinart founded the Maison Ruinart in 1729, making it the oldest established champagne house still in operation. The commercial champagne industry was born. Moët et Chandon followed in 1743, and by the mid-eighteenth century, sparkling champagne had become the fashionable drink of European courts. The English market, in particular, had developed a taste for fizz even earlier, with London merchants adding sugar and molasses to still Champagne wines to induce a secondary fermentation.

A widow with a riddling table turned a craft into an industry; clarity never looked so revolutionary.

Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, the widow (veuve) who took over her husband's champagne business in 1805, developed the riddling table (pupitre) around 1816. This innovation allowed sediment to be collected in the neck of the bottle and removed cleanly, producing the clear, bright champagne we recognise today. It was a breakthrough that transformed production from a craft into an industry. Veuve Clicquot remains one of the most recognised names in champagne.

Britain's taste for drier wine quietly reshaped a nation's most celebrated drink.

Until the 1870s, champagne was typically very sweet, dosed with large quantities of sugar. In 1874, Perrier-Jouët shipped a brut (dry) champagne to London, responding to British tastes that favoured less sweetness. The style was a revelation. Within decades, brut became the dominant style worldwide, and it remains so today. The British influence on champagne's evolution is often underestimated; it was English glassmakers who first produced bottles strong enough to withstand the pressure of fermentation.

It took riots and rifles to draw the borders that protect every bottle bearing the name.

In January 1911, vignerons in the Champagne region rioted over the use of grapes from outside the designated area. Producers had been importing cheaper fruit from the Aube and other regions, undercutting local growers. The unrest was severe enough to require military intervention. The crisis ultimately led to stricter appellation laws, and by 1927, the boundaries of the Champagne AOC were formally established. Only wine produced within these borders, using approved methods, could bear the name.

1936 gave Champagne its armour; the AOC locked in every grape, yield and bubble before the world could copy it.

The formal AOC designation in 1936 codified everything: permitted grape varieties (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier), maximum yields, minimum ageing periods and the méthode champenoise itself. It was the legal framework that protected Champagne from imitation and ensured quality. The region had survived phylloxera, two world wars fought across its vineyards, and economic depression. The AOC gave it the armour to endure commercially as well.

The landscape and the wine were always inseparable; in 2015, the world simply made it official.

In July 2015, UNESCO added the Champagne hillsides, houses and cellars to its World Heritage List. The inscription recognised the Avenue de Champagne in Épernay, the historic hillsides of Hautvillers, Aÿ and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, and the chalk cellars beneath Reims. It was formal acknowledgement of what visitors had long understood: this landscape is inseparable from the wine it produces. The designation brought renewed international attention and a surge in wine tourism to the region.