The Widow Clicquot by Tilar J. Mazzeo Page B

different parts of the region.
    Barbe-Nicole already knew that blending depended on terroir . She had watched enough harvests and tasted enough of the juice to know that each grape was the product of the soil that had produced it. In winemaking, experts talk of the indefinable essence of terroir , the gift that the land gives to the grape and that creates the potential range of tastes and aromas it can express. Just as the minerals of the Dead Sea are thought to have inexplicable healing qualities for the sick and the infirm, so the soil of a great vineyard—from the composition of its clay and chalk to the wild plants that prosper in it—is spoken of reverently and in ways that can make it seem magical.
    In the twenty-first century, scientists have undertaken chemical analysis of the vineyards of the Champagne and have confirmed their special properties. The chalky and acidic soil of the region develops the aroma of the fruit, and its northern location prevents the grapes from developing too many natural sugars. The moist springs and dry summers slowly deprive the grapes of water, allowing them to ripen gradually, without being overshadowed by foliage. The chalk in the soil lets the ground retain water in the winter and release it slowly in the dry summer periods.
    Just as serving champagne at the right temperature—around 45°F or 7°C, best achieved by chilling the bottle in a mixture of ice and water for half an hour—will open up the flavors of the wine, so the right conditions in the vineyard will bring out the most striking qualities in the grape. It is because these conditions are so subtle and complex, depending on a combination of the right amount of rain and sun, at the right moments, in the right soil, that vintage years are rare. Vintage years are exceptional harvests, years when the winemaker does not need to rely on fine reserve wines, saved from a previous harvest, to round out the blending.
    Perhaps above all, Barbe-Nicole and François soon learned that bottling wine—and especially the sparkling pink champagne that proved so popular—was a risky business. Breakage rates could be ruinous. In a hot summer, eighteenth-century vintners sometimes lost as much as 90 percent of their champagne stocks when the pressurized contents of the sparkling wine exploded. Unlucky vintners could awaken to discover their storerooms, filled with the wine on which they had staked their future, flooded with wine and broken glass.
    Local growers like the Cattier family in Chigny-la-Montagne must have still remembered the legend of Allart de Maisonneuve’s staggering losses in the sweltering summer of 1747, when his cellars were so toxic with the fumes of spilled wine that no one could enter them for months. Now, vintners again were faced with cellars throughout the Champagne awash in pools of ruined wine. The heat wave that began in 1802 would grip France for three consecutive summers. What could be saved from the wreckage was turned into vin de casse —breakage wine—but it had to be sold at rock-bottom prices and had little appeal.
    They soon realized that the quality of the bottles was part of the problem. French glassmaking was often a shoddy business, and ordering bottles could be maddening. Staring down at misshapen and flawed glasswork, Barbe-Nicole and François must sometimes have despaired. If they put champagne in these bottles, there would be little left to sell come autumn. Yet glass bottles were absolutely essential to the manufacture of champagne.
    The shapes of the bottles created more obstacles. It wouldn’t be until 1811 that someone would invent a machine for molding commercial glassware. Until then, wine bottles were blown by hand. The result was bottles with inconsistent shapes and sizes. Customers might not have cared, but François had reason to worry when he saw them. In a cellar, bottles had to be stacked on top of one another, and uneven bottles did not stack steadily. Collapsed rows of ruined