HOW CHAMPAGNE WAS DISCOVERED.

Otago Witness, Issue 1476, 28 February 1880, Page 27

HOW CHAMPAGNE WAS DISCOVERED.

The discovery that revolutionised the wine trade, that the process of fermentation could be checked, and an effervescing wine produced in consequence, was most probably, like many other grand inventions, the result of accident rather than design. For instance, a knowledge of the properties of bottled beer waa discovered by chance. A drunken workman who overslept himself was the first to find cut the virtues and peculiar aroma of highly-dried snnff, and the discovery made hid master's fortune. Doubtless, it was to some similar fortuitous concatenation of circumstances that tho art of making that bright, clear, and sparkling wine, which is aa pleasing to the eye as it is grateful to the palate, is due. Here is one version believed by many to be a correct one :— A monk of more taste than honesty, had abstractedjfrom a cask in the monasterial cellars of his coavent, some still champagne, which he bottled for his own private drinking, and was alarmtd one night by a series of explosions. Corks had been blown into the air, and the stolen wine which he had vainly endeavoured to keep in confinement was running in froth and foam over the sides of the bottles. Tho terrified monk concluded that the devil must have got into the wine ; but the prior of the monastery knew better. He tasted the wine, found at once that it was good, shrewdly de* terminod to bottle some of it for himself, and ended by going through a series of experiments which had for result the discovery of the true art of making champagne. — Once a Week.