Think of Champagne and what comes to mind? The Great Gatsby? New Year’s Eve? Formula 1? What about cider?
Cider and Champagne may seem far cries from one another, but there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the relationship between the two. In fact a lot of what works to bring Champagne’s vivacious fizz to life was used on Cider first, to the point where Champagne may not be the drink it is today without the existence of Cider.
Don’t believe me? Well, let’s go on a little history lesson, shall we?
A wine and cider writer, featured in Wine52’s Glug magazine, Pellicle magazine, Burum Collective and Two Belly. The mind behind wine newsletter J’adore le Plonk and an untiring advocate for spritzing every drink she can get her hands on.
Before there was Champagne there was Méthode Ancestrale, the name given to pétillant-naturel style sparkling drinks. Ancestral because it’s a method of carbonating drinks that predates traditional methods and, unlike most methods of carbonating cider today, involves only one fermentation.
This simplified form of sparkling wine is often traced back to 1531 Limoux, France. The monks who were cultivating vineyards at the time supposedly discovered that by bottling their wine ever so slightly earlier than usual the last of the carbon dioxide would become trapped in the bottle, causing a soft, foamy fizz.
Now you’d be right to point out that this was a method used in winemaking, not cider making. But there is no such thing as original thought, and it’s important to know which sparkling methods were already in use during the sixteenth century before we go onto some rather exciting sparkling cider history.
Now if you’ve ever opened a bottle of sparkling wine or cider you’ll have felt the force of the vast amount of pressure there is once you start to remove the cork. This pressure is the same amount—5-6 atmospheres to be precise—as can be found in the tire of a double decker bus and is crucial to keeping the drink fizzy.
In order to house this pressure safely and without explosions the glass of a champagne bottle needs to be incredibly strong, but that wasn’t always the case. In the early days of glass production glass was incredibly flimsy and a lot of drinks—if they were mistakenly bottled before the fermentation had finished—would explode the glass once their fermentation picked back up again.
This was especially the case with the Champagne region of France. At the time Champagne was a still, pretty unimpressive wine that was frequently exported into the UK. During the winter fermentation would stop due to the cold and wine would be packaged and sent over to England where, in the spring as things warmed up, bottles would begin to pop in more ways than one.
Luckily for us, in 1615 King James I, with heavy campaigning from the MP Sir Robert Mansell, brought a law into place that banned timber from being used in glass furnaces. Not for worry of the environment, but to ensure there was enough wood for their beloved British Navy. Those working in glass production now had to look elsewhere for something to heat their furnaces.
In came coal. And with it a furnace that increased in heat tenfold. The result was a thicker, stronger glass that could be made quicker and cheaper. A win win for everyone, but especially for one Sir Kenelm Digby, an English courtier and diplomat who had the smart idea of funnelling extra oxygen into the furnaces.
Verre Anglais, as this glass became known in France, became a hit. And being an English invention this glass was originally used in the nearby cider making counties first to bottle their cider, prior to it being adopted by Champagne. But before that could happen, cider was about to have its own time in the sparkling spotlight.
“Our design is relieving the want of wine, by a succadeau of cider,” wrote John Evelyn in his infamous 1664 Pomona.
The want of wine Evelyn is referring to, can be traced to a series of Navigation Acts put in place during the 17th Century that severely limited the wine being imported into the UK. These Navigation Acts came as a direct result of the varying wars that occurred between France and other winemaking countries in Europe for the best part of this century. For large periods of time, as these wars raged on, very little wine was making its way into the UK.
But fear not, for this lack of wine only served to clear the stage for cider and perry.
Patriotism is of utmost importance during times of military conflict, so not only was cider filling the void that wine had left but was also a British drink, grown by British people on British soil. Cider replaced wine on most tables throughout the land and was drunk in similar ways too, out of glass bottles and from glass flutes. So much so that a very popular cider variety at the time was nicknamed Vin de Scudamore. Drinking cider in this manner became an act of patriotic duty
And it was perhaps this reverence applied to cider at the time that led to so many taking an interest in how to make and maintain sparkling cider.
The oldest glass associated with cider drinking is not a pint glass, but a flute. That’s right, the way Champagne is drunk today is the way Cider was drunk four centuries ago. Made around the year 1650 the flute is often referred to as the Chesterfield Flute and is currently housed in the Museum of London.
It is likely that this glass would have been used to drink a variety called Redstreak, also known as the Scudamore Crab and it was this resulting cider that was nicknamed Vin de Scudamore.
Redstreak was a tough, tannic apple but this made it perfect for creating long lasting ciders and gained a reputation for itself as an alternative to wine. It was often the variety of choice for those experimenting with cider production at the time. And not just any cider production, sparkling cider production.
Not happy with altering the course of glassmaking history Sir Kenelm Digby went on to explore how his inventions would aid cider production.
In his wonderfully titled The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Knight Opened Digby explored all the ways in which a person could make their cider sparkling, with the help of his trusty new glass bottles, of course. Redstreak—our Vin de Scudamore—was Digby’s apple of choice and his instructions included sections on cider storage throughout the seasons so as to keep fermentation in hand, and exploding bottles at bay.
And the innovations didn’t stop there. John Beale—a clergyman, writer and member of the Royal Society—discovered that the addition of a “walnut” of sugar to cider would increase the quality of the fermentation process and the bubbles it would produce. Both Beale and Digby’s findings inspired a man called Christopher Merret to write a paper entitled Some Observations Concerning the Ordering of Wines where he applied these cider techniques to wine making that would go on to form the foundation for the Traditional Method.
Who knew that Champagne would owe so much to cider?
But the relationship between cider and Champagne doesn’t stop there.
I imagine you may have heard of Bulmers, but for those of you who have not Bulmers was an English cider company started in 1887 by Henry Percival Bulmer using apples from his father’s orchard. Not long after its beginnings, in order to gain more insight into cider making, Percy travelled, not to other cider makers in England, but to the Champagne region of France.
And on his return to Hereford not only did Percy Bulmer have a better idea of how to make cider, but how to market it too.
“Hereford – The English Rheims” declares the poster for Pomagne, a Champagne Cider de Luxe created by Bulmer’s on Percy’s return. The comparisons came thick and fast with Bulmer’s marketing themselves as a Cider that could rival all the fun and frivolity of Champagne.
And why not? If Champagne production can trace a lot of its methods and processes back to England and those championing Cider in the 17th Century, why couldn’t Bulmers market themselves in a similar fashion a couple of centuries on?
Not long after Cider de Luxe came Babycham, named after the Perry’s likeness to Champagne in fizz and appearance. Both drinks made names for themselves not only through their alignment to Champagne, but, as Vin de Scudamore had done before them, by being local and more economical options to the infamous French drink.
When you begin to map the history of sparkling cider alongside the history of sparkling wine you quickly see that neither drink evolved in a vacuum separate from the other. Taking turns at influencing and inspiring one another has led to where we are today, where sparkling cider is still more than capable of rivalling Champagne.
Their differences in fruit, region and history do not work to make one superior than the other, but to serve as rich, cultural examples of all the collective minds that have gone into innovating how and why we drink what we do.
We may have only scratched the surface but it’s clear even from this brief look that the history of sparkling cider is a fascinating and important one. And as we have seen here, one that should never be forgotten.
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