Saint-Evremond

Charles Marguetel de Saint Denis, Seigneur de Saint-Evremond (1610 – 1703)

 

Obwohl heute eher selten erwähnt, gilt er unter manchen Winzern in der Champagne und auch unter manchen Kennern weltweit als eine der geschichtlich wichtigsten Personen hinsichtlich des Erfolges des Champagners überhaupt.

Saint-Evremond was a well-known author, philosopher and satirist (his works include 'Moraliste', 'Sur les plaisirs' and 'Comédie des académistes') of the period, who had also earned himself much fame in France in his earlier years on the battlefield (around Rocroi, Nördlingen and Freiburg) through his valour as a soldier.

A remarkable Frenchman who, in 1660, as companion of the Comte de Soisson, conveyed congratulations on the English Restoration to King Charles II in London on behalf of the French King Louis XIV.

However, Evremond, due to his superior intelligence and his rather blunt, honest and therefore somewhat undiplomatic, satirical manner, fell out with the French king the following year. He then decided to go into exile in England instead of the cruel Bastille in France.

In England, he became a welcome guest at the court of King Charles II and also proved himself to be an 'ambassador of good taste' among numerous other English nobles. As early as 1661, he introduced barrels of the excellent, often more or less sparkling white wine from Champagne (vin gris). These wines quickly became a 'hit'. It is even said that it was he (and not, as is often said, the breast shapes of various famous French beauties) who designed the legendary coupe glass in which he introduced Champagne wine to influential English circles.

This 'new, sparkling wine' quickly became fashionable. In surviving old invoices from this period, the cost of the wine, the bottles and the corks are listed separately, which suggests that the wine from Champagne was always received in barrels and immediately bottled on arrival (in which the second fermentation may have continued in the warm cellars).

The successful marketing of these 'wonderfully sparkling wines from the Champagne region' by Saint-Evremond in England (some 20 years before Dom Perignon and Frère Jean Oudart were striving for perfection in this type of wine) must also have caught the attention of some contemporaries in Champagne.

 

 

 

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