Publication - “Le champagne : regards croisés sur une identité en mutation” (Champagne: differing perceptions of a changing identity)

This is the title of a new work published by Presses Universitaires de Reims, featuring a wealth of illustrations and charts and written by historians, geographers, physicists, chemists and economists.

DESCRIPTION

While historians bemoan the small number of works devoted to vineyards and wine in Champagne before the 17th century, recent research sheds new light on the slow development of wine-growing techniques between 1650 and 1830, reveals the social and economic aspects of public houses and bars in the rural environment at the end of the Ancien Régime and opens up little-known aspects of the circulation of champagne wines during the revolutionary period.

The scientific treatment of champagne bubbles makes us discover the principal advances made in the field of physical-chemical comprehension of the fizz and sparkle of this wine.

Finally, an economic analysis calls into question our vision of the traditional aspect of champagne, which, built up as an aristocratic luxury product, has become mass market product, which now belongs to mercantile luxury.

CONTENTS

1/ Introduction by Bernard Grunberg, Benoît Musset and Fabrice Perron.

2/ From the production of Champagne Wine to Champagne:
 Patrick Demouy: an indispensable preamble with the historic map of the champagne vineyards,
 Benoît Musset: the production of champagne wines from 1650 to 1830. The emergence of a new technical world.
 Philippe Jeandet and Gérard Liger-Belair: Applications of physical-chemistry and spectroscopy to the study of champagne bubbles and foam.
 Philippe Roudié: Viticultural research in human science at the University of Bordeaux.

3/ Champagne: commercialisation and consumption
 Thomas Brennan: Rural consumption and cabarets.
 Fabrice Perron: Multi-modality of means of transport and the champagne wine trade from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century.
 Christian Barrère: Champagne, from an aristocratic wine to a mercantile luxury product.