Ep 610: The Greats - A History of Champagne (How Champagne Became Champagne) Part 2

Wine for Normal People

Arts, Food

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2026

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is part two (Ep 609 is Part 1)of a two-part series on the history of Champagne, which tells the story of how Champagne became Champagne!

Photo: Champagne Vineyards Credit: WFNP

I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole when I discovered an entire encyclopedia of the history of Champagne on the Union des Maisons de Champagne site. It was the equivalent of 200 pages of information on Champagne from its origins up until the 1980s and was detailed and fascinating.

In this show I cover:

The innovations of the 1800s that made Champagne sparkle on purpose with consistency and the contributions of the Veuve (widow) Clicquot
The effects of phylloxera on Champagne
The Champagne Riots

World War I and German occupation part 1
The Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and the effect of Prohibition
World War II and German occupation part 2
Post war, rebuilding, UNESCO status, and a commitment to the environment

Enjoy!

Source of all this fascinating info is...

Full show notes and all back episodes are on Patreon. Join the community today!

www.patreon.com/winefornormalpeople

_______________________________________________________________

This show is brought to you by my exclusive sponsor, Wine Access – THE place to discover your next favorite bottle. Wine Access has highly allocated wines and incredible values, plus free shipping on orders of $150 or more. You can't go wrong with Wine Access! Go to wineaccess.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Wine for Normal People, the podcast for people who like wine, but not the snobbery that goes with it.
0:15.7	I'm your host Elizabeth Schneider, author of the Wine for Normal People book and Certified Wine Dork.
0:21.6	A quick thanks to our sponsor Wine Access for supporting this show.
0:25.1	If you love discovering great wine but don't want to waste money guessing what to order,
0:28.7	Wine Access makes it easy.
0:30.5	They work with top winemakers and salmliets to find exceptional bottles you normally wouldn't
0:34.8	discover on your own.
0:35.9	All shipped directly to your door.
0:37.5	Visit Wineaccess.com slash WFMP.
0:40.9	That's wineacec-e-e-S-S dot com slash W-F-M-P and use code W-F-NP-P-26 for 10% off your first order.
0:50.3	I hope you enjoyed part one of champagne history. So much here takes you back into the medieval
0:58.0	time, a totally different mindset as you're thinking back through history and all of the
1:03.1	royalty and nobility that enjoyed champagne over the years, which built up its status. That was
1:08.5	really the first part of the show.
1:14.3	And then the idea that, oh, there's a market for sparkling wine.
1:16.7	And this is something that we have that no one else has.
1:19.8	How do we make this interesting capitalize on this? So that's part one.
1:21.7	And then this part is all of the more modern history.
1:26.1	This is when we start to get into how the ideas around
1:30.5	making champagne today got started. The contributions of Louis Pasteur and Vue of Cliqueau,
1:39.0	the widow Clico, talking about how champagne dealt with phyloxera, how they dealt with World War I, the Depression, World War II, and then all of the innovations after the post-war era and what we're looking at today.
1:52.5	It's a great show, very different vibe from the first one, even though it was all recorded at once, just different periods of history.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Wine for Normal People, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Wine for Normal People and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.