War and wines

According to peasant lore, the Lord sends a poor vintage at the start of war and a good one to end it. The harvests in France at the start of both world wars last century were generally bad – although Champagne produced fine vintages in both 1914 and 1915: wines which, as one commentator said, have the blood of France running through them. Champagne has seen more fighting than most wine-regions. Thanks to its location on the northern crossroads of Europe, it has been invaded dozens of times, with the ferociousness of modern warfare felt most especially in the First World War.

It is too early to predict the quality of the next harvest in Champagne, or whether French grapes in general will find it necessary to respond to the American war against Iraq and France’s opposition to that war. But old tales of wine and war reveal poignant and plausible support for this stance by the French, who have no palate for further grapes of wrath.

Soldiers and champagne

Wine and war have been interwoven since time immemorial. The ancient Greeks would mark their military triumphs by destruction of vineyards, as the barbarian invaders of Roman Europe were also to do. Wine has been sometimes used as a military tactic; during the Thirty Years War which ravaged Europe in the seventeenth century, for example, burgermeister Nusch saved the town of Rothenburg by responding to an enemy commander’s challenge and downed a 3.5 litre goblet of wine in one gulp. (The mayor then passed out for three days.) More enduringly, wine’s benefits as a prophylactic against illness, as essential sustenance and solace for soldiers, have been recognised by the likes of Cyrus the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon. The latter, some say, lost at  Waterloo only because he had to fight on Belgian beer, having had no time to collect the requisite wagonloads of champagne.

For the French in particular, wine is part of their lifeblood, their heritage and culture. A recent government-commissioned study into what epitomises the French found that their fourth most essential characteristic (after being born in France, defending liberty, and their language) is wine. As one winegrower had it: ‘With our wine we have survived wars, the Revolution and phylloxera. Each harvest renews promises made in the spring. We live with the continuing cycle. This gives us a taste of eternity.’

No surprise then to find champagne supplied to French soldiers in the terrible trenches of the First World War, and calls for wine canteens at every major railway station where they would gather in the Second. French soldiers, it is said, rank their wine rations alongside their ammunition, and have been known to brave all manner of perils, including artillery fire and even military police, to get it. When there were victories, wine was a partner. As Napoleon said of champagne: ‘In victory I deserve it, in defeat I need it.’ More recently, as jingoistic Americans called for boycotts of French wines to signal their displeasure at French reluctance to join their Gulf battle plans, someone asked sardonically what, if the Americans boycotted champagne, would they find good enough for toasting their victory with?

Defending the sacred soil

Champagne now might be one of the richest and most successful of European wine regions, but its story has long episodes of tenacity and perseverance against much adversity. Historically it has been one of the hardest hit by the ravages of war, while in times of peace it has been heavily vulnerable to both weather at harvest time and fluctuations in the fortunes of the international markets upon which it depends so heavily. Champagne was pillaged by the Prussians after the battle of Waterloo, all but destroyed by phylloxera later in the century, the scene of major riots in 1911 over early attempts to make an official delimitation of its borders; its vineyards were dug up for trenches and blown apart during the First World War, when, for four long years the front line ran along the foot of the Montagne de Reims.... (‘Remember gentlemen’, said Churchill at the time, ‘it’s not just France we are fighting for, it’s Champagne!’)

The champenois showed dogged determination to harvest the 1915 vintage even as artillery shells exploded around them. When the inhabitants of Reims returned at the end of the war they found, said Bertrand de Mun of the house of Clicquot, ‘that there were only ruins, there was neither housing nor cellars ... and when a few brave souls did venture back on their own, they could not even find a roof over their heads.

The collapse of the important Russian champagne market after the 1917 revolution and post-war anti-alcoholic sentiment (reaching its extreme in American Prohibition) added to the woes of the champenois. Post-depression recovery was barely underway when the poor 1939 harvest heralded the start of Hitler’s reign of occupation, terror and destruction.

Under Field Marshall Goering the Third Reich carried out its policy of stripping occupied territories of all that was valuable. Wine and other agricultural products were taken (leaving the French a nation of ‘the growling stomach’), along with works of art and luxury goods, to be transported back to Germany, and sold internationally or distributed amongst the elite. Some of the finest were stashed at the Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s mountaintop retreat on the Austro-German border. Bernard de Nonancourt, whose mother started the Laurent Perrier champagne house and whose father and brother died in consecutive world wars, was pleasurably charged with ‘liberating’ this cellar at the end of the war. With true French reverence for wine, the half a million bottles found there were carried down the mountain on medical stretchers…. Amongst the great wines, what most impressed de Nonancourt was, of course a champagne – a 1928 Salon.

Over two million bottles of champagne were seized during first few weeks of German occupation. Weinführers (wine negotiators acting on behalf of the German government) were appointed for each major wine region in France, with Herr Otto Kläbisch, a former wine-merchant, assigned to Champagne. The Weinführers were knowledgeable about wine, which was both boon and disadvantage to the French. They all had a love of fine wine, had had pre-war dealings with the trade and in many cases were personal friends of the French winemakers. They knew what was at stake if the French industry collapsed, but were duty-bound to meet the demands of the Wehrmacht (whose officer class, like Napoleon’s, marched on champagne), and those of their overlords.

The demand was for two million bottles a month, at an appointed price, spread across the champagne houses – creating local fears that some of the smaller ones would not survive. This prompted the Vichy government and the champenois under Robert De Voguë (who resigned from Moët & Chandon for the course of the war), to set up an organisational body. This was soon replaced by the powerful Comité Interprofessional du Vin de Champagne (CIVC) to organise all important aspects of the champagne industry as a whole (as it continues to do to this day). The CIVC managed to save the smaller houses and prevented the Germans from stripping Champagne of all its stock; it ensured that all producers were treated equally during the war requisitioning, and preserved a basis from which to trade when it was over.

German demands escalated, acts of brutality and deprivation against the French increased. Relations between de Voguë (who was involved with the Resistance) and the Germans deteriorated to the point where de Voguë was arrested and sentenced to death. A mass protest from all the champagne houses, threatening to bring the German champagne supply to a standstill, prevented the planned execution, and he was committed to prison instead, where he came close to dying.

Some of the champagne houses suffered particularly. The head of Piper was killed fighting in the Resistance, and his firm was sequestrated when the Germans discovered weapons hidden in its cellars, and Moët was also taken over when it was found to be the headquarters of a cell of Resistance fighters.

The French responded to heightened German oppression by increased resistance activity, and by becoming a ‘nation of liars and cheats’. Champagne and other wine was buried in gardens, hidden behind false walls in cellars throughout France, and in the hundred or so kilometres of underground limestone tunnels criss-crossing beneath the streets and buildings of Reims and Epernay. These ‘caves’ played an important role, being used by the Resistance to hide both people and ammunition. As for the cheating: mousseux from non-Champagne grapes, and poorer quality and diluted champagne, marked ‘Special cuvée for the Wehrmacht’ formed regular parts of consignments. The tactic did not always work, for Kläbisch had a good palate, and many champenois were imprisoned. The destination of consignments of champagne, however, occasionally provided the Resistance with valuable information on the movements of German troops.

The good harvest

Fittingly, Reims, great wine town and capital of this region so often devastated by war, was both the headquarters of General Eisenhower, and the venue for the signing of the unconditional surrender of the Reich’s army, air force and navy, on 7 May, 1945. The grapes were developing beautifully in the vineyards, and some months later the harvest, though small, was exceptionally good!

Prosperous Champagne retains none of the bitterness of those war years. What has remained is the passion of its people for their vines and wines. The positive legacy of the war for the region is undoubtedly the CIVC, which has made it perhaps the most thoroughly organised in the world – and ‘champagne’ probably the most protected word in any language.

Given Champagne’s history of triumphing over social and natural adversity, and its great and unique wine developed and perfected over three centuries, a toast is in order, in a time of war which will devastate not the vineyards of northern France but the area which saw the birth of wine: To the champenois, and to peace! May wisdom and wine prevail over war!

— Meryl Weaver is a specialist wine guide and a Cape Wine Master student.
Much of the information here comes from Wine and war: The French, Nazis and the battle for France’s greatest treasure, by Don and Petie Kladstrup (Hodder and Stoughton, 2001)