Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/767

Rh The straw-white wine from the Champagne district, especially from Hautevillers, became famous during the reign of Louis XIV. The king contributed to bring the new wine into fashion by having it on the royal table. The great wine connoisseur of the day, Marquis de Sillery, at a souper d'Anet, introduced champagne in flower-wreathed bottles, which, at a given signal, a dozen blooming damsels in the guise of Bacchanals placed upon the table.

Thus heralded, champagne became par excellence the wine of civilization. So Talleyrand in his epigrammatic way called it, "vin civilisateur par excellence" In England, at the beginning of the present century, champagne was the necessary adjunct to all public and private banquets. No formal affair was complete without it. And yet, ninety, eighty, seventy, or sixty years ago the amount of champagne made and required was comparatively small. Indeed, it is only within the last forty or fifty years that the consumption of champagne has increased by "leaps and bounds." It has increased fourfold within thirty years; it has-doubled within the past fifteen years; and in this connection, it is significant to note that the growing demand for champagne has come, not from France, but from foreign countries, principally from Russia, England, and America. Five times as much champagne is required outside of France as is used for home consumption.

The extraordinary demand for champagne stimulated the wine-makers of other grape-growing districts and of other countries to produce a genuine vin mousseux. The result is, there are many sparkling wines—for example, the sparkling wines of Germany and Austria—but only one kind of champagne, and that is made in the Champagne district of France.

The earliest attempt at the manufacture of champagne on a commercial scale in the United States was made in Ohio about the year 1850. At that time there were extensive vineyards in the Ohio Valley. The pioneer and promoter of an American champagne industry was the Hon. Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati. He procured expert and capable wine-makers, and imported improved machinery and appliances from the Champagne district of France. He was fairly successful in making a sparkling Catawba wine. For several seasons—that is, from 1862 to 1865—the vines were attacked by pests and fungoid diseases; the vineyards of the Ohio Valley were destroyed, and the champagne business ruined. Since then the grape and wine industry has been transferred to the northern part of Ohio, along the shores of Lake Erie, and a small amount of champagne is now made at Kelley's Island, Toledo, and Sandusky; also at St. Louis, Mo.

Meanwhile the lake region of central New York was rapidly coming to the front as the land of vineyards. We refer to the