Who Invented Champagne?

Since the power of ignorance is not only enormous, but also annoying, we present you monthly a new (useless) fact that will make you slow down for a moment and consider that indeed you do not know everything –despite of you being so convinced you did. So, from now only not only your classes make you smarter, but reading The Voice also does. Fifth fact with graduation ceremonies coming up: who invented champagne?

It might be a surprise and even an insult for the French, but it were the English who found out champagne… In the sixteenth century the English imported a lot of French sparkling wine and developed the process that is nowadays known as the méthode chamenoise, because Royal Society reports describe it for the first time in 1662. The French added some finesse and good marketing, but only in 1876 they have been able to put the finishing touch to it and the products were only made for export to Britain. Up to today this country is the largest importer of French champagne, drinking in 2004 for example 34 million bottles of the sparkling wine. This is about one third of the entire French export, it is twice as much as is being drunk in the States, three times as much as the export to Germany and twenty times as much as in Spain… Well, at least now we know where the expression ‘as drunk as a lord’ comes from!

These, former and other facts you can find in ‘The Book of General Ignorance’, Faber and Faber, London, 2006