Did the English Invent Champagne?

The traditional French methode champenoise may not be a French invention after all, according to writer Tom Stevenson.

Stevenson, author of the book “Champagne” (Sotheby’s/Wine Appreciation Guild: 1986), said in a recent article in Taittinger magazine that evidence now shows that the English wine trade actually discovered how to create a second fermentation to put sparkle into wine.

Stevenson quotes from a document dated 1662 that shows sugar and molasses being added to wine to make it bubble. This, says Stevenson, is “documented proof that six years before Dom Perignon set foot in Hautvillers . . . the English invented the liqueur de tirage , which is the vital link between chance and design in the development of sparkling wine.”

The French are proprietary about both the terms methode champenoise and Champagne , convinced they are synonymous and should be used only on wines coming from the Champagne district of France.

After heavy lobbying by the Comite Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne--the quasi-governmental agency that represents producers and growers in the Champagne district--the European Economic Community ruled that by next year only sparkling wines from the Champagne district may bear the words methode champenoise or Champagne if they are sold in the Common Market.

At the so-called Treaty of Madrid in 1930, representatives of many nations agreed to avoid use of the term Champagne on sparkling wines. The United States, which was going through Prohibition, was not invited to the conference. Now the French are irritated that some California wineries (such as Schramsberg Vineyards and F. Korbel & Bros.) continue to use the term Champagne on their sparkling wine.

In recent years, CIVC has pursued its claim of exclusivity for the terms methode champenoise and Champagne in courts around the world--but not in the United States. Now CM/CV proposes that the term methode champenoise be replaced on U.S. sparkling wines by the words classic method .

Meanwhile, Italian makers of sparkling wine, facing the 1994 EEC deadline to eliminate use of the term, are considering two alternatives--the words spumante or metodo classico. The term used for German sparkling wine, Sekt , makes no reference to method of production and isn’t likely to change.

But Stevenson suggests that the term methode champenoise is actually inaccurate. He suggests that perhaps Champagne that has undergone a second fermentation in the bottle should be labeled “English method.”