History of Champagne Timeline

Throughout the 18th century, Champagne houses opened up, creating a new business dynamic in the Champagne region as merchants began buying grapes and producing and selling their own wines.

However, by the end of the 18th century non-sparkling pinkish wine production still accounted for over 90% of the Champagne region's output, showing that sparkling wine was not yet the dominant style.

For the next century, until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire would be the second largest consumer of Champagne in the world, becoming a vital export market for Champagne houses.

Image source: Russian Empire

Advances by Veuve Clicquot in the méthode champenoise made large-scale sparkling wine production profitable, and this period saw the founding of many famous champagne houses, including Bollinger in 1829.

Image source: Bollinger

The Champagne house Krug was founded in 1843 during the boom period when advances in the méthode champenoise made large-scale sparkling wine production profitable, joining the ranks of today's most celebrated houses.

Image source: Champagne Krug

Throughout most of the 19th century Champagne was made sweet, but in 1846 the Champagne house Perrier-Jouët introduced a wine made without any added sugar, foreshadowing the drier styles to come.

Image source: Perrier-Jouët

In 1854, the French national railroad system linked Reims with the rest of the country, including its coastal ports, dramatically expanding Champagne producers' ability to ship their wines to domestic and international markets.

Image source: Rail transport in France

The Champagne house Pommery was established in 1858 amid the flourishing of the modern champagne industry, later playing a pioneering role in popularizing the brut style of champagne.

Image source: Pommery

Over the next generation, the brut style with significantly less sugar than wines labeled extra dry became fashionable, with Pommery introducing the first Brut champagne in 1874, characterized by its lower sugar content.

Image source: Sweetness of wine

The fortunes of the Champenois suffered as phylloxera appeared in the region, destroying vineyards and compounding a series of setbacks that also included riots, lost markets, and war.

Image source: Phylloxera

To compound the misery for Champenois vine growers, the last few vintages of the 19th century were difficult, with frost and rains severely reducing crop yields and straining the livelihoods of local growers.

Image source: Champagne Riots

The harvests between 1902 and 1909 were further troubled by mold and mildew, continuing a run of poor vintages that deepened the economic hardship facing vineyard growers in Champagne.

The 1910 vintage was particularly troublesome, with hailstorms and flooding devastating the crop and further aggravating tensions between vine growers and the Champagne houses.

In January 1911, frustrations reached a boiling point as vine growers rioted in the towns of Damery and Hautvilliers, angry over Champagne houses using cheaper grapes from outside the region while local growers suffered poor harvests and low prices.

Still some Champenois forged on in producing Champagne during the difficult vintages of World War I (1914–1917), even as the vineyards of the region became a battlefield on the Western Front.

Image source: Western Front (World War I)

In 1917 Russia, the October Revolution saw massive prohibition of Champagne as an imported beverage, closing one of the world's largest markets and dealing a severe blow to Champagne exports.

Image source: Sovetskoye Shampanskoye

In 1919, the French government passed a series of laws that would lay the groundwork for the Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) system, strictly defining winemaking laws and regional boundaries to protect the Champagne name.

Image source: Appellation d'origine contrôlée

The 1920 declaration of prohibition in the United States closed off yet another major export market, and the global economic downturn of the Great Depression led to a further decrease in Champagne sales.

Image source: Prohibition in the United States

Along with the introduction of the New Economic Policy, the Soviet government decreed in 1924 the domestic production of sparkling and dessert wines for the masses, replacing French imports within the USSR.

The first bottle of Soviet Champagne (Советское Шампанское) was produced in 1937 using technology very similar to the Charmat method used in Asti, creating a mass-produced substitute for French champagne in the USSR.

It was in Reims, on May 7, 1945, that the German military commander Alfred Jodl offered an unconditional surrender to Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, marking a pivotal moment ending World War II in Europe.

Image source: German Instrument of Surrender

The following morning, the signing of the German surrender in Reims was celebrated with six cases of the 1934 vintage of Pommery champagne, symbolically linking the city's liberation with its famous wine.

As global tastes evolved toward ever drier styles, Laurent-Perrier released Ultra Brut in 1981—publicized as one of the first modern Brut Nature Champagnes made without any dosage, a category later formalized by the CIVC.

In 1985, use of the term méthode champenoise was outlawed for producers outside the region, who opted instead for phrases like méthode traditionnelle to signify that their sparkling wine is made using the same production methods as Champagne.

Image source: Traditional method

Ultimately, French Champagne saw its mass introduction back into the Russian beverage scene with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991, reopening a historic market more than seven decades after the revolution.

Building on the trend toward drier champagnes, the CIVC formally codified the Brut Nature category in 1996, defining wines made without any added dosage following the trail blazed by Ultra Brut in 1981.

Image source: Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne

In 2008, an expansion of the Champagne appellation was approved, adding 40 more villages to Champagne production while delisting 2 villages, increasing the AOC area by about 30% to meet growing demand.