Champagne or sparkling wine? If we talk about bubbles, we all have Champagne in mind. And we feel as important as the Sun King to drink it, paying for it five times more than a sparkling wine. But are we sure that we are not victims - once again - of a simple commercial operation? A huge commercial operation (some would say "marketing") that has its roots in a distant history. And that finds its success in Italy perhaps by leveraging on the xenophilic sentiment that circulates in Italian veins. This time to feel "cool" we do not say it in English but in French, in conclusion. But the truth is another. Wines similar to Champagne were produced in the Mediterranean basin at the time of the Psalms and of Homer, who describe them.
The Romans widely produced similar wines, as all classical literature testifies. At that time France was still a forest full of more or less subjugated barbarians. In the “600, therefore many centuries later, a clever commercial operation centered on a French Benedictine monk, Dom Pierre Pérignon, transformed the already appreciated production of an abbey in the Champagne region, into a global phenomenon. They started producing sparkling wine. And since the region was called "Champagne" they gave it its name.
What then "Champagne", a bit like Campania, takes its name from the root "campus", fields, countryside. That is, a land of work of fields, peasants, hoes and plows. But just don't think about it and here it seems to us something noble. And then the strong French national pride has monopolized the attention, so much so that if you think about the bubbles today we simply think of Champagne. The Italians pursued that success when the Gancia brothers, in the second half of the 800th century, invented the “Italian champagne”. But the Italians produced sparkling wine almost two millennia before Dom Pérignon.
Champange or sparkling wine… but why should we drink Champagne?
So one wonders if, having to choose between Champagne or sparkling wine, the question cannot be reversed. For example, wondering: given that there are dozens if not hundreds of Italian sparkling wines, and given that the Italians produced it well before the French, why should we drink Champagne? Let's face it: any medium quality Italian sparkling wine is ten times better than the most prestigious sparkling wine. And it costs a tenth. Of course, if we feel "cool" to say foreign words that we don't understand the true meaning, perhaps it is better that we continue to drink that sparkling wine from the land of hoes, plows and Gallic peasants. Still thinking that it is a land of nobility, almost as much as the wine which produces. If, on the other hand, we want to go deeper into things and maybe not be ashamed of a little healthy Italian pride, we will never ask ourselves "Champagne or sparkling wine?"
