A History of Champagne, with Notes on the Other Sparkling Wines of France. Henry Vizetelly

      The jovial old rector with the sepulchral appellation then proceeds, according to the most approved method of warfare, to carry the campaign into the enemy’s territory. He admits the nutritive and strengthening properties of Burgundy, but demands what it possesses beyond these, which are shared in common with it by many other vintages. He then prophesies, with the return of peace,[152] the advent of the English to buy the wine of Reims; and concludes by wishing that all who dispute the merits of Champagne may find nothing to drink but the sour cider of Normandy or the acrid vintage of Ivri. The citizens of Reims, thoroughly alive to the importance of the controversy, were enchanted with this production; they did not, however, crown the poet with laurel, but more wisely and appropriately despatched to him four dozen of their best red and gray wines, by the aid of which he continued to tipple and to sing.

      Grenan, resuming the offensive in turn, at once addressed an epistle in Latin verse, in favour of Burgundy against Champagne, to Fagon, the King’s physician.[153] Complaining that the latter wine lays claim unjustly to the first rank, he allows it certain qualities—brilliancy, purity, limpidity, a subtle savour that touches the most blunted palate, and an aroma so delicious that it is impossible to resist its attractions. But he objects to its pretensions.

      ‘Its vinous flood, with swelling pride

      In foaming wavelets welling up,

      Pours forth its bright and sparkling tide,

      Bubbling and glittering in the cup.’[154]

      He goes on to accuse the Champenois poet of being unduly inspired by this wine, the effects of which he finds apparent in his inflated style and his attempts to place Champagne in the first rank, and make all other vintages its subjects; and he reiterates his allegations that, unlike Burgundy, it affects both the head and the stomach, and is bound to produce gout and gravel in its systematic imbibers. He concludes by begging Fagon to pronounce in his favour, as having proved the virtues of Burgundy on the King himself, whose strength had been sustained by it. The retort was sharp and to the point, taking the form of a twofold epigram from an anonymous hand:

      ‘To the doctor to go

      On behalf of your wine

      Is, as far as I know,

      Of its sickness a sign.

      Your cause and your wine

      Must be equally weak,

      Since to check their decline

      A prescription you seek.’[155]

      Nor was the poet of the funereal cognomen backward in stepping into the field; for he published a metrical decree, supposed to be issued by the faculty of the island of Cos in the fourth year of the ninety-first Olympiad,[156] in which, though a verdict is nominally given in favour of Burgundy, Grenan’s pleas on behalf of this wine are treated with withering sarcasm.

      But whilst these enthusiastic partisans thus belaboured one another, there were not wanting impartial spirits who could recognise that there were merits on both sides. Bellechaume, in an ode jointly addressed to the two combatants,[157] adjures them to live at peace on Parnassus, and, remembering that Horace praised both Falernian and Massica, to jointly animate their muse with Champagne and Burgundy:

      ‘To learn the difference between

      The wine of Reims and that of Beaune,

      The fairest plan would be, I ween,

      To drink them both, not one alone.’[158]

      Another equally judicious versifier called also on the Burgundian champion[159] to cease the futile contest, since

      ‘Bold Burgundian ever glories

      With stout Remois to get mellow;

      Each well filled with vinous lore is

      Each a jolly tippling fellow.’[160]

      And the learned Canon Maucroix of Reims exhibited a similar conciliatory spirit in the ingenious parallel which he drew between the two greatest orators of antiquity and the wines of the Marne and the Côte d’Or. ‘In the wine of Burgundy,’ he observes, ‘there is more strength and vigour; it does not play with its man so much, it overthrows him more suddenly—that is Demosthenes. The wine of Champagne is subtler and more delicate; it amuses more and for a longer time, but in the end it does not produce less effect—that is Cicero.’[161]