Dan Snow's History Hit - Champagne Riots

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Rebecca Gibb is a Master of Wine. A ninja who can sniff out a Merlot from a Margaux at 50 paces. In this archive episode, she talks to Dan about the riots that tore through the region of Champagne just before the First World War as the small wine growers rose up against the power of the big Champagne brands. This story has it all: invasive species, globalisation, climate crisis, superbrands, booze and artisanal production.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. For those of you doing dry January, I have nothing but sympathy. I like to ease the passage of this darkest and coldest of months with plentiful supplies of alcohol. But you know what? Each to their own. You do you. I hope you don't think I'm trolling you because in this episode I'm talking about the greatest of drinks, the greatest of beverages, libations, and that is of course champagne.

I'm talking to Rebecca Gibbs. She's a master of wine. greatest of drinks, the greatest of beverages, libations, and that is, of course, champagne. I'm talking to Rebecca Gibb. She's a master of wine. She is a ninja who can sniff out a Merlot from a Margot at 50 paces. But I know nothing at all about wine. I like drinking it, but I don't know anything at all. And so she was here to school me on the history of the good stuff. This will blow your mind when you hear about American grapes in France. It is brilliant. This is a back episode of the podcast, recorded a few years ago, and I want to repeat it now because it is so good. It was thoroughly enjoyed at the time. We've had lots of listeners who've joined us since. I hope everyone enjoys this. When I talked to her, she just researched and written an amazing paper on the riots that tore through the region of Champagne just before the First World War as

small wine growers rose up against, guess who? The big commercial wine growers that had monopolistic tendencies. Yep, sounds familiar, folks. This story has it all. It's got invasive species, globalisation, climate crisis, geo-strategic rivalry, super brands, booze, and fashionable artisanal production. It's very modern. Like everything in history,

we talk about the past, but really, we're sort of talking about today as well. If you want to go and subscribe to History Hit TV, which is the world's best history channel, pour yourself a glass of champagne, folks, or English sparkling white, or whatever living drink you like. Pour yourself a glass of something, sit down in front of your smart TV, your screen of choice, and just go to History Hit TV and enter a world of history. Netflix for history, a proper history channel for proper history fans. No aliens, no aliens on there, no Hitler popping up in Argentina, no actual history, things that have actually happened. If you follow the link in the description of this podcast, it'll take you

there. You get two weeks free if you sign up today. You can join the ever-growing army of History Hit TV subscribers. It'd be great to have you along. But in the meantime, folks, here is Rebecca Gibb. Enjoy. Thank you so much for coming on the show. You're welcome. You asked nicely. Yeah, I did ask nicely. Repeatedly. I've been trying to get on for ages. I know. You're a busy man, I did ask nicely. Repeatedly. I've been trying to get up for ages. I know, you're a busy man and I'm a busy lady. So, champagne, was it always the luxury brand of alcoholic grape juice? Well, it hasn't actually always been sparkling until the sort of the late 17th century, early 18th.

It was still very much a still wine. It's amazing to hear that most of the wines were actually red rather than white. So Champagne was a red flat wine. Yeah, and you can still get red flat wine from Champagne. Bollinger makes one. There's a village called Bouzy which specialises in rouge, so Bouzy Rouge. I know, you couldn't think of a better name, could you? So it wasn't sparkling until maybe early 18th century and they didn't really have a grasp over how it was becoming sparkling at that point.

It isn't until winemaking technology comes along in the 19th century that we actually get a hold on what makes champagne sparkling and what it would look like today so people in the 18th century when when you when you get like characters and dickens they drink champagne it's just this weird fizzy wine that's coming out and no one quite knows why it's fizzy well there isn't a lot of scientific knowledge around wine until the likes of loisier and chaptel and pasta come along uh until then it's really what they've been doing before. What did their fathers do? What did other monks do? It really was just a case of observation.

How cool. So, okay, so we've got, okay, so champagne, when did it become the sort of the poshest version of wine? Well, actually, in Restoration London, there was an exile called Charles de Saint-Evermond, who is buried in Port's Corner in Westminster. He comes along to Restoration England and he introduces champagne to the royal courts. And that's when its first association really comes with luxury. In the early 1800s, the Tsars and

princes were starting to drink it, but there wasn't a lot of it going around at that time. I think there's some statistics that say in about the early 1800s, there's probably around and princes were starting to drink it but there wasn't a lot of it going around at that time I think there's some statistics that say in about the early 1800s there's probably around 300,000 bottles of sparkling champagne being made there's not a lot of it going around there's lots of people to want to drink it so it necessarily has a high price so really it is only reserved for high society at that time. And can other parts of France make fizzy wine today? Anyone can make fizzy wine. In the same way as champagne, you can use the champagne method,

which means that you do a second fermentation in the bottle. So fermentation is sugar plus yeast, makes alcohol and carbon dioxide. So you do your first fermentation to make a still base wine and then you put it into a bottle, you add some sugar, you add some yeast, byproducts are carbon dioxide and alcohol and the carbon dioxide is trapped in the bottle and that's where you get the sparkle from. So it's a bottle fermented sparkling wine you can do that anywhere but you can only call it champagne if it is from the area that is champagne and that was one of the major reasons for the riots in 1911 which we'll talk i'm sure we're going to talk about at some point tell me about these riots that's fine to talk to you what on earth's going with champagne right well obviously champagne is

associated with luxury it has been as i say I say, since sort of Restoration England. And yet there is great poverty in the Champagne region in the early 1900s. There's lots of factors involved in the Champagne riots. But really the catalyst for the riots that take place in spring 1911, people have basically got no money. Bread prices are skyrocketing and they had a total failure of a harvest in September 1910, which means they've got no grapes to sell. Times are tough. So that's a catalyst. But trouble has been fermenting in Champagne for at least 20 years before the riots took place. Why? What's wrong with Champagne?

What's wrong with France? For the French wine industry in the late 19th century, one of the big problems that the country faces at this time is a thing called phylloxera. Phylloxera is an aphid and it goes around nibbling on the roots of vines, it eats the sap and it also when it goes on its merry way leaves wounds behind which any disease can therefore access. It comes from America and in 1862 a vine grower in a village just north of Avignon receives a present from an American friend. He receives some vines. It doesn't go so well then.

Within two years of him planting these vines, he notices these galls on the leaves, on the vines. The vines are dying. Several miles away, the same thing is happening. So this is happening early 1860s by 1900 2.5 million hectares of vines in France have been uprooted because phylloxera has basically ravaged France's vineyards people use various methods to try and cure it but they're really you can't just deal with the symptoms people are injecting a nerve poison carbon disulfide into the soil in an attempt to

prevent its spread it works for a while it's not so it's not so effective the government the french government also offers a 20 000 franc reward for a cure and there are some fanciful cures offered up including a marching band playing in the vines and there's also a burying alive toad and other another such useless ideas but what they had to really do was they had to graft their vines onto the rootstock of an American vine and that is the only cure for Phylloxera. Are you telling me that all the French vines in France today are descended from American vines? I am telling you that all the vines across the world

that are vitis vinifera, that are international, like Camelot Sauvignon, Chardonnay, they are all grafted onto the rootstock of an American vine. Is that big news for you? I mean, my French brother, our brother is French, really, and he's got a heart so many years. Sorry, man. Yeah, it's true. But if it wasn't for American, what's known as American rootstocks,

there would be no French wine industry today. Really? Yeah. So that process is now going on in the late 19th century. Yeah. Sounds expensive. It's very expensive. It's not necessarily the cost of the wood to create the new vine.

It's actually the cost of uprooting your entire vineyard and then replanting it. If you want to replant a vineyard, you have to wait between three and five years for a crop. Oh, my goodness. So there were all these vineyards having to rip out their vines, and then they're having to replant at great expense. They haven't really got any life savings left. They don't have any assistance from the government to do this. And then on top of that, in the early 1900ss there are crop failures through mildew, there's

lots of rain, there's rot, people aren't able to harvest. This is one of the great problems for Champagne and the rest of the country in 1910 that they've got a string of failed harvests on top of having to replant huge financial problems. on top of having to replant huge financial problems. You listened to Dan Snow's History Hits. We're talking about champagne. More coming up, I wish. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Are most grape producers in this period, are they kind of artisanal who then give their grapes to the local vineyard? I mean, so they're not, they're smallholders, are they?

Champagne has a unique structure in that it's very fragmented and people who own vineyard parcels own very small vineyard parcels and they don't have the infrastructure to produce the wine. So that's why you've got the likes of Merton Shandon or Louis Roderer, their champagne houses, they don't own enough vineyards today, even today, to fulfill all their needs to make their wine. So what happens is there are grape growers and there are wine producers in Champagne and the grape growers are selling their grapes to these big houses on negotiations. And if they haven't got any grapes to sell, what are you going to do?

The Champagne houses, however, have got reserve stocks from previous vintages, so they're able to draw on these reserves in difficult times. So they're not as highly affected. And you've got the First War on the horizon, which is not easy in champagne either. But anyway, so let's talk about, when are the riots? So the riots start to occur in the first three, four months of 1911. Oh, 1911, turbulent year year and the harvest has failed in september 1910 they harvested around two percent of what they would do on average 1907 was a terrible harvest 1908 was a terrible harvest 1909 was a very small harvest although the quality

was good and then you get this absolute cataclysmic harvest in 1910. So no one's got any grapes to sell and yet this is the time when champagne sales are at record highs. People are drinking a lot of champagne by now. Champagne sales almost double between 1890 and 1910. So you've got 300,000 bottles being sold in the 1800s to these czars and princes, 39 million bottles by 1909. But there are no grapes. So where's all the wine coming from? It's not coming from the Marne department or the Aube department,

which is the traditional heartland of champagne production. So all your big champagne producers are buying in the grapes from elsewhere? The unscrupulous ones are, yes. They are buying in grapes from the Languedoc, thank you to the railways in the 19th century, and also lots of the wines coming from the Loire Valley. They are being trucked in by rail to Epinay Station, and then they're going into the cellars of these négociants

and they're coming out sparkling and with a champagne label on it. People are pissed off. And people therefore blame lots of the négociants for depressing great prices. Supply and demand economics suggests that if your sales are at record highs and your grape harvest is at a record low, the price for grapes is going to necessarily be high. However, that doesn't work when...

You can cheat. You can cheat. And so all of these grape growers in Champagne take masternode hands yes they do things come to a head in April 1911 things have been boiling in the first few months of 1911 there are isolated incidents of villagers going into some of the merchants' houses and basically tipping, emptying casks down the street, of glass bottles being strewn all around the village. And obviously nobody was saying anything. The police would arrive and everyone would be back in their houses. would arrive and everyone would be back in their houses. But things come to a head in April 1911.

The government have been moderately involved in coming up with some regulations to prevent fraud from happening. But they've been dilly-dallying and they haven't been implementing these laws. And the producers are just sick of it. And so April 1911 they take to the streets and they take to the vineyards and in the village of Ayi which is where Bollinger is based for example there are barricades put up there are champagne houses burnt to the ground and the government by that time has already brought in troops so there were troops stationed in Champagne to try and maintain peace they've seen that trouble is fermenting since the 1910 harvest failed and they are trying to keep cap on it but there are too many vignerons and And in April 1911, they do around, they cover about a million pounds worth of damage

to various champagne houses, and there are about 40,000 vines that are trampled or burnt or raised. It's quite interesting to know that a lot of those vines that were damaged belonged to the unscrupulous merchants. There is a book called the Livre Noir des Assassins. So basically an anonymous pamphlet has been produced in early 1911 that lists down all those producers who are thought to be acting fraudulently. And it's interesting to know that the champagne houses that were targeted in these attacks were the ones that are listed in this book.

Okay, so it's action, quite directed action at these houses. What is the effect? Does the government, the troops, they crack down presumably not on the fraudsters, but on the people rioting? not on the fraudsters but on the people rioting. Absolutely and in the town of Eponay on the same day the cavalry charges at another protest and villagers on the street are opening their doors for people to escape the sabres that are being swung at them but because of the violence incited on these days in April a lot of people turn against the vignerons um they didn't like the violence one of this is one of the cinema local cinema owners he went out into the street to film what was happening to then show it in his cinema and his theater and it actually turns out that the police then sees this film and use it on CCTV and they arrest 150 people that they see on this film. As a result, arrests are made and then trials take place in a mining town an hour to the north of Vepene in Douai.

There's a trial of around 46 people. But the jurors are all miners and they take pity on the Vignerons. They're experiencing similar hardship at this time and there are only a few that are actually convicted. What is the long term impact of these riots? It's interesting to note that tensions that were fermenting then start to go on a simmer after the riots. The government has decided that it will create a zone where you can only make champagne and it's now going to implement those measures. So the riots worked?

In a way, yes, the riots kind of worked. The government agrees to implement the measures around the zone of Champagne. So now there is an embryonic, what we call an appellation. They also have an area about 100 kilometres to the south called the Aube, who want to be part of Champagne. And this was part of the tensions. The Marne wanted just to be Champagne, but the Aube, which is near Troyes, which is the historical centre of the Champagne region, they also want to be part of Champagne for reasons of history. And so what the government does, it creates the Marne, which is the most prestigious Champagne zone, but you can also create Champagne as a deuxième, a second zone in the Aube. create Champagne as a deuxième, a second zone in the aube. It's a bit of fudging, but it works for now. These riots are happening in April and by May and June, the vines are flowering again. It's time

to get back into the vineyards for these vignerons to get ready for the next harvest, which turns out to be bountiful. And those economic issues are less pressing once they have grapes to sell. Did everything go back to the way it was before or were there changes in the relationships between the grape growers and champagne houses? Did they forgive them? The big champagne houses, the big famous names, tended not to be the ones that were committing fraud. The tension between the grower and the houses persists to this day because the prices of the grapes each year are decided and there's always the houses want them cheaper

and the growers want them to be more expensive. And there's that structural tension within champagne which continues to this day. As people around the world want to drink champagne, there's enough grapes. They've managed to produce more and more grapes, I guess. Or do they sneak them in? They do not sneak them in. However, in 2008, when champagne sales were at a record high,

funnily enough, the INAO, which is the legal body for appellations in France, they announced that they were going to do a review of the Champagne area and that they were looking at increasing the vineyard area by about a thousand hectares. Its timing was impeccable, shall we say. They're still doing the analysis of the sites but should you be on the right side of the border your land will be around you know a million euros a hectare if you land the wrong side of the border you might be selling your land for about five thousand euros a hectare wait five thousand well if you can't plant vines in champagne you, you can plant cereals. That's the difference, a million versus 5,000. Wow. If you're in a Grand Cru vineyard in Champagne, you're going to be paying at least 2 million euros a hectare.

A hectare is not very big. It's only a matter of time before we're sitting here and you're telling me that the French have decided there's a little area of southern China that they're going to allow to be grown in Champagne. I can see it. Well, thank you so much. That what a weird and wonderful story uh into an industry that we all think we know about um is your book just about champagne okay so I'm going to be writing a book about the history of wine fraud and I'm currently about 20,000 words deep into it. I'm working on my agent on that and it should be ready to submit to publishers by April, fingers crossed.

And I hope that it will be out in maybe 18 months to two years. So perhaps I'll come back here and chat to you about more dodgy dealings in the wine industry. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks. You've made it to the end of another episode. Congratulations. Well done, you. I hope you're not fast asleep. If you did fancy supporting everything we do at History Hit, we'd love it if you would go and wherever you get these pods, give it a rating, five stars or its equivalent. A review would be great. Thank you very much indeed. That really does make a huge difference. It's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account. So please don't ever do that. It can seem like a small

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