The Devil in Love

AUTHOR’S NOTEIt is greatly accepted that champagne was the result of Dom Perignon’s life work. He was certainly the first man to produce sparkling champagne in France. But as Patrick Forbes shows in his brilliant history of ‘Champagne’ it is equally certain that the English were quietly making champagne nearly a decade earlier. .Champagne’There is no mention of champagne in French literature until around 1700, but in Butlin’s Hudibras, first performed in 1666, it refers to champagne being ‘brisk’. Hudibras“Drink every little l’it in stum (still wine) “Drink every little l’it in stum (still wine)And made it brisk Champaign become.” And made it brisk Champaign become.”In Sir George Etherege’s ‘The Man and the Mode’ which opened in 1676, there were the lines, ‘The Man and the Mode’“Then sparkling Champaign Puts an end to their reign It quickly recovers Poor languishing lovers”. As Patrick Forbes remarks, this 17th Century English champagne must have been primitive in the extreme. But the fact remains that the basic principle of manufacturing sparkling champagne, which Dom Perignon worked out for himself at Hautvillas, had already been discovered and drunk by the English.