Short Story # 14

Dear Micks,

Here is another story for you written by Ned Halley, an award-winning newspaper columnist and member of the Circle of Wine Writers. In addition to his annual guide Best Wines in the Supermarkets, published by Foulsham, his books include Absolute Corkers, commended by The Times as 'a lively romp through the world of wine' and a history of the Sandeman Dynasty, 200 Years of Port and Sherry, called 'a riveting tour de force' by Matthew Norman in the Sunday Telegraph. Ned lives with his family in Somerset.

Champagne orders

By Ned Halley

There is a touching story of Napoleon Bonaparte’s last campaign before his abdication of 1814. Refusing peace even after the catastrophic retreat from Moscow, the Emperor cavalierly submitted France to invasion by the Russians, whose Cossacks overran and ravaged La Champagne, the wine region east of Paris, trapping Bonaparte in the town of Epernay. There, he billeted himself with Jean-Rémy Moët of the celebrated champagne maison. The two had been friends for many years, and in gratitude for his loyalty (and perhaps in contrition for the needless destruction he had visited on Champagne) Napoleon solemnly rewarded Moët with the Légion d’Honneur, the order Bonaparte had himself inaugurated in 1802. This was no ordinary gesture, for the cross and ribbon he pinned to his friend’s chest was his own.

It was an act of kindness and humility not entirely in keeping with the character of the man who brought France a decade of imperial grandeur at a cost of one and a half million French lives, as well as incalculable destruction to his enemies. But France forgave Napoleon, and chooses to remember La Gloire rather than le chagrin. Champagne, which had been a battlefield long before 1814 and has seen worse since, has positively taken Napoleon to its bosom. Moët & Chandon commemorate the great man in the name of their Brut Impérial non-vintage wine, which was for many years tactfully re-named Première Cuvée for the British market.

In one sense, the champagne producers as a whole had reason to be grateful to Napoleon for the nemesis of 1814, because the Russian officers who swept into the vineyards and cellars of Epernay and Reims were thus introduced to the delights of the extraordinary sparkling wines made there. Naturally, they helped themselves, but their occupation was transitory, and their thirst eternal. Nicole-Barbe Ponsardin Clicquot, better known as La Veuve Clicquot, watched with equanimity as her cellars were looted. “They drink today,” she said, “but tomorrow they’ll pay.” She was as good as her word. Following Napoleon’s abdication, the occupiers withdrew, and Mme Clicquot immediately sent her salesman, with a shipload of samples, to Russia. In the triumphal mood prevailing there, sales were brisk indeed, and the market that was to make champagne the vast business it is today was thereby created.

Napoleon himself was keenly appreciative of champagne. Throughout his campaigns, he had supplies of the wine carried along with the other impedimenta of his grandes armées. Victories had to be celebrated, and representatives of the champagne houses were frequently to be found among the camp followers, eagerly awaiting the outcome of each battle in order to make timely approaches to the victorious side.

Several champagnes houses claim that Napoleon showed a preference for their wines. Quite apart from the hospitality he received at Moët & Chandon, where they built a fine pavilion exclusively for his use (it still stands), the Emperor also stayed with the Ponsardin family in Reims, where no doubt he would have made the acquaintance of Clicquot wines.

The smaller maison of Jacquesson et Fils found imperial favour in 1810 when Napoleon visited their cellars in Chalons-sur-Marne and awarded the firm with a gold medal for “la beauté et la richesse de nos caves”. Jacquesson have since moved to the charmingly named village of Dizy, but still proudly display the medal on their labels, and recall that Napoleon toasted his victory at Wagram with bottles of their wine.

It is not only with champagne that Napoleon’s name has associations. The Cognac industry has long dressed itself in the Emperor’s finery. The original ‘Napoleon Brandy’ is said to have been that of the great vintage year of 1811, bottled specially for the Emperor with the embossed ‘N’ on the neck. It seems improbable Napoleon would ever have encountered any of this spirit, as he had been exiled to St Helena before it would have been bottled. This has not forestalled a lively market for allegedly priceless bottles of this brandy which by now, of course, are collectable rather than drinkable. Most, no doubt, are fakes.

One cognac house, Courvoisier, has adopted Napoleon as an important symbol. There is a genuine association, for several casks of Courvoisier were loaded on to the frigate in which Bonaparte was supposed to escape to America after Waterloo. But the ship was intercepted by the British, and the cognac taken as a prize. Ever since, Courvoisier has produced a Napoléon brandy, as the term has also been adopted for any cognac which has had five or more years’ barrel age before bottling. Unhappily for the name of the great man, the Napoleon-labelled spirits are not the best-quality bottles in the producers’ ranges, but the second best. Thus is France’s greatest soldier, law-giver and egomaniac fondly commemorated.