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The Shipwreck’s Champagne — The Story
There are bottles of wine that become famous not only because they are exceptionally good, but because they have been part of history, of an event. The beauty of wine is above all in the year of the harvest, that date written on the label that makes us wonder, when we drink wines with a few years behind us, what we were doing in that year.
Wine therefore sometimes goes beyond its own qualities, it is as if it carries with it a piece of history, a small or large memory of some small or large event it has witnessed.
In the early 1900s, Heidsieck and Co was the smallest of the big Champagne brands, such as Roederer and Veuve Cliquot, and the royal houses of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia were loyal customers. The maison was founded in 1785 by Florence-Louis Heidsieck in the countryside of Reims, in 1860 it had signed contracts with the court of the Tsar of Russia and with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1911 the King of England granted Heidsieck & Co the prestigious royal mandate with which the maison became “Supplier of Champagne for His Majesty”, and was able to add the word Monopòle, monopoly, next to the name on the label. In Russia, Tsar Nikola II’s personal orders exceeded 400,000 bottles.
