Reims, 14 July 2020
July 14, sometimes called Bastille Day, is France’s national holiday and is both popular and family-oriented. It’s an occasion for which champagne is the wine par excellence — as indispensable as roasted wieners, fireworks, and cold beer for Americans on Independence Day.
Champagne and French history
It all goes back to the Fête de la Fédération on July 14, 1790 — a moment of celebration and national unanimity for which a huge crowd of several hundred thousand gathered on the Champ de Mars in Paris. One year after the fall of the Bastille, King Louis XVI, with the crown prince and Queen Marie-Antoinette and in the presence of the Marquis de Lafayette, commander-in-chief of France's National Guard, the members of France’s first legislature, and the populace, pledged allegiance to the Nation and to its new constitution.
Champagne was part of the festivities, and that date is one of the mythical milestones of champagne’s history. Once the wine of the nobility, it henceforth targeted a broader market. Champagne has always been associated with the high points of French history, and has become a national symbol.
Chanoine — a family history
At that time the House of Chanoine was in its third generation. Pierre Chanoine, the founder, had passed the torch to his eldest son Jean-Baptiste, an important merchant and Champagne citizen, and to his two grandsons, whom he had the pleasure of seeing grow to adulthood and inherit his passion for champagne.
Brothers Jacques-Louis (1754-1844) and Pierre II (1759-1824) got along well. They also had good business sense and an enterprising spirit. In 1787 they formed a partnership to run the House, located in Épernay since its founding in 1730. They gave the business a new impetus and focused it exclusively on Champagne wines.
Chanoine Héritage
The Chanoine Héritage cuvées issue directly from that history. They are authentic and generous champagnes that grace family tables and transmit the pleasure of champagne from generation to generation.
The Chanoine Héritage line, heir to the House’s accumulated expertise, today comprises five cuvées to celebrate life’s finest moments… and any holiday!:
- Chanoine Héritage Cuvée Brut
- Chanoine Héritage Premier Cru
- Chanoine Héritage Cuvée Rosé
- Chanoine Héritage Blanc de Noirs
- Chanoine Héritage Millésime 2015
