Exploding Bottles
“Where once shards rang out, today we hear laughter. Yet every sparkling wine still remembers the explosions of its past”
When Bottles Roared Like Cannons
“The Devil’s wine first fires in the cellar—only afterwards does it smile in the glass”
In the previous part, we spoke about the invention of foil to cover the neck of the bottle. Now we descend far deeper underground — into the cellars where champagne lived for centuries in darkness and often terrified the workers. Long before its golden wrapping appeared, there was already a hidden steel-like force inside the bottle, a pressure the fragile glass could not always withstand.
Underground Artillery
17th–18th centuries. A Champagne house cellar: darkness, dampness, often rats, and hundreds of bottles stacked on wooden racks. Suddenly — a dull bang! Glass shatters like grapeshot. The next bottle is struck, falls, and a chain reaction begins. Each explosion is not only shards of glass, but also lost money. Sometimes half the vintage was gone.
In accounting books there was even a separate line — pertes par explosion (“losses by explosion”), the damages were so significant. Workers dressed like soldiers: leather aprons, metal masks, thick gloves. Yet even that could not save them from cuts and scars.
The Price of Risk
Every burst bottle made champagne rarer and more expensive: a surviving bottle could be worth twice, even three times as much. Champagne became not a drink of everyday life, but an attribute of celebration and power.
A paradox: chaos and loss underground only strengthened champagne’s reputation above ground. It came to be seen as the wine of aristocracy precisely because it was too risky and too scarce to ever be common.
The heavy losses directly shaped its price:
• In the 17th–18th centuries, 30–50% of a harvest could explode in the cellars — producers lost half their wine before it ever reached the market.
• The cost of each surviving bottle multiplied, turning champagne into true luxury for the nobility and court.
• By the 18th century, champagne was firmly established as an aristocratic drink. It could never be a “people’s wine” — economics alone dictated that. The higher the risk, the more precious and desirable the survivors became.
Contemporaries noted that in Paris, champagne cost several times more than ordinary wines.
A Cellar Fit for an Emperor
📌 One of the most popular anecdotes in champagne history links to a visit by Napoleon Bonaparte to the underground cellars of Moët & Chandon in Épernay. When Napoleon and his officers were being shown the vaults, the host, Jean-Rémy Moët, warned them to duck their heads — bottles sometimes exploded on their own from the pressure. The Emperor smiled, bent down, and is said to have remarked:
— War is war, but champagne still demands respect.
Beyond the Cellar Walls
The story of “bottle-bombs” didn’t end underground. Champagne remained dangerous all along its journey — from loading to the consumer’s glass.
► On the roads and in warehouses
• Transport over bumpy roads (especially from Champagne to Paris or to the ports) was a lottery. Carts jolted, bottles clashed, and many burst on the way. Merchants often marked their invoices with casse par route (“losses by road”).
• In intermediate warehouses (London, Amsterdam) there were cases of chain reactions: several explosions in a row destroyed entire consignments, and warehouse owners demanded compensation.
► In the holds of ships
Champagne was shipped to England, Holland, Russia. In the warm, damp holds bottles “matured” faster—and often exploded. British port records of the 18th century mention: “champagne explosion in cargo hold” — mini-detonations that frightened sailors into thinking a fire or an attack had begun.
⛵ …A cargo ship, Baltic Sea, ca. 1795
The creak of masts, the roll of waves, and below deck — hundreds of bottles packed in straw and wooden crates. Sailors sleep while the watchman yawns. Suddenly, in the darkness — a muffled crack, like a musket shot.
— Cannons?!” — a cabin boy shouts.
— It’s that damned wine!” — growls the boatswain. — Stand back, it’s about to chain.
Indeed, one bottle after another bursts. Shards fly, lantern flames reflect in spilled wine. The hold fills with flying straw, splinters, and the sharp scent of fermentation. Buckets and mugs, always kept ready by the bulkhead — precisely in order to quickly collect spilled wine before it seeps into cracks and attracts rats.
— Buckets here! Fast! First save the wine, then the glass!
The crew moves like a fire brigade. One gathers shards, another scoops the wine, a third pours it into mugs. “Disposal” was well-established: part “for sanitation” (swallowed), part “not to let good drink go to waste” (same swallowed).
Kneeling, sailors ladle frothy, straw-flecked champagne into barrels, or straight into cups.
— Safe to drink? — whispers the cabin boy.
— If there’s no glass between your teeth, it’s safe, — the boatswain replies, raising his mug.
Drawn by the sweet smell, rats pour out of the shadows — dozens of them. They swarm the puddles, drinking, squeaking, fighting. Drunk rats tumble over each other, crashing into equally tipsy sailors, knocking over bowls.
— Now even the rats are drunk! — grumbles a seaman. — Tomorrow the captain will think we trashed the hold ourselves.
— At least they’ve developed taste, — the boatswain laughs. — Not for bread — only champagne.
The hold still reeks of yeast and straw. Exhausted sailors slump against the wall, mugs of “rescued” wine in hand.
— Well, brothers, let’s drink — may the bottles explode less often, and may we drink more often.
The mugs clink — no less loudly than cannons.
📌 Baltic ship logs of the 19th century note that “sparkling wine tears the hold apart like cannonballs.”
► In Private Cellars and Noble Houses
Explosions were just as common in aristocratic wine cellars. Servants sent to fetch a bottle of champagne often returned not only with wine, but also with cuts. Chronicles mention a curious case: in Paris in the 1770s a marquis lost an eye when he decided to “personally open the new novelty from Champagne” — the cork shot out with the force of a bullet.
📌 A physician of the early 19th century wrote:
“A bottle of champagne, if handled carelessly, causes more wounds than a kitchen knife.”
🍾 …Scene in an English cellar (~1770s)
A dim wine cellar in the estate of Lord Greystone. Rows of champagne bottles, purchased from French merchants, rest on the shelves. The cellarman, Thomas, inspects them by candlelight as usual. Suddenly—a sharp crack! One bottle, stored at an angle, explodes.
Shards fly; Thomas cries out as glass cuts his face and hands. The candle falls, almost extinguished. Other bottles tremble on the shelf, as if preparing to join the catastrophe.
Lord Greystone rushes down at the noise, guests at his side, recoiling in alarm.
— Damnation! French champagne will kill us before we even taste it! — he mutters, shielding himself with his cloak.
A kitchen maid hurries in with a towel and a stub of a candle.
— Is he alive? — the lord asks.
— Alive, milord. The wounds are shallow, but there’s blood!
They sit Thomas on a barrel, wash his face with wine (thought of as a cleansing remedy), and send a boy running for the village doctor.
📌 Doctor Foster’s Memorandum, late 18th century
“What to do for glass injuries from bottles of sparkling wine”
→ First, stop the bleeding — press a clean cloth or piece of linen firmly on the wound.
→ Do not let the injured rub eyes or face — shards may lodge deeper.
→ Rinse with wine or strong spirits — “to drive out corruption” (as was then believed).
→ Apply a clean linen bandage, tied with string.
→ Keep the patient still, avoid movement of the hands — lest bleeding resume.
→ Give small measures of strong drink (brandy, port) — to soothe the spirit and dull the pain.
→ Avoid returning to the cellar for some days — “for glass has a habit of bursting in company.”
French Fear and Ingenuity
In France, until the late 18th century, wine cellars resembled powder magazines. To prevent chain reactions, racks were separated by partitions, and different batches of wine stored in separate vaults — so that the entire harvest would not perish at once.
Merchants had a saying:
“Store champagne as if it were gunpowder, drink it as if it were gold.”
📌 Voices from the era
• Archives of Moët & Chandon preserve complaints: “Every third vintage perishes from explosions.”
• A monk in Reims lamented: “The Devil dances in our cellar.”
• Workers swore that thunder during storms often coincided with the “cannonade” of bottles inside the vaults.
► Prestige Born of Fear
Curiously, the danger only heightened champagne’s allure. Each bottle carried not just cost and rarity, but also risk. It was a drink that demanded courage — from a monk in the abbey cellar to an aristocrat at the table.
📌 One might even say champagne became the “adrenaline wine” of the 18th century: you did not only drink celebration, you risked for it.
The “English Hint”
The root of all this chaos lay in the glass itself. French bottles—light, fired in wood-fueled furnaces—shattered even under modest pressure. The English, however, who smelted glass using coal (timber being reserved for shipbuilding for the Royal Navy), created thicker, darker, far more durable bottles.
Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665) is regarded as the “father” of the strong bottle. His squat, rounded “onion bottles” could withstand far higher pressure. And in 1662 (long before Dom Pérignon), the English scientist Christopher Merret (1614–1695) described the very process of secondary fermentation: when wine could “ignite itself again” with bubbles — what the French cursed as the “Devil’s wine”, the English already called “the wine of the future.”
And though the French to this day dispute who deserves the honor of champagne’s birth, the road of this famous wine runs not only through the Benedictine abbey of Hautvillers, but also through the halls of the Royal Society in London and the furnaces of English glassworks.
🍾 …From Reims to the Winter Palace
English bottles were sturdier, yet they too sometimes burst—though not as often as their French cousins.
In the early 19th century, when Madame Clicquot discovered and conquered the Russian market, the journey of a champagne bottle was full of perils. First came the jolting roads of France: casks and crates of bottles were packed on straw mats, layered with felt or moss to soften shocks.
Then came the transfer to ships bound across the Baltic. The bottles were stowed deep in the holds, away from sun and heat, and sailors were strictly instructed: “Do not jolt or tumble them!”
Yet even so, in Riga or St. Petersburg, porters often heard the telltale rattle of shards inside crates: dozens of bottles had not survived the voyage to the palace.
→ In St. Petersburg and Moscow
In the palaces of the imperial family and the nobility, champagne became the centerpiece of celebrations. But opening a bottle was always a ritual of both fear and delight:
• Servants held the bottle in a linen sack so that, if it burst, shards would not scatter through the hall.
• The neck was sometimes wrapped in a damp cloth to soften the pressure.
• Just before uncorking, everyone instinctively stepped back—leaving only one brave cupbearer or valet to perform the dangerous maneuver.
Memoirs of St. Petersburg grandees recall corks shooting so hard they pierced ceiling plaster. In other cases, bottles literally exploded in servants’ hands.
📌 An anecdote of the era
One foreign diplomat wrote in the 1810s:
“In Russia they open champagne as they load a cannon: first a prayer, then a risk. But once the wine is poured, the eyes of the imperial couple and all the guests shine as if they had won a victory over the bottle itself, like an enemy defeated.”
Champagne on Campaign
It is well known that Napoleon loved champagne — “In victory you deserve it; in defeat, you need it.” But how to deliver such fragile bottles across a continent where cannons thundered and the earth shook with war?
Packing
In army convoys, bottles were carried in oak crates, each wrapped in straw or tow. Crates were stacked atop barrels of ordinary wine, so as not to rattle against the wagon floor. Sometimes sheepskins or felt were layered between them. Wagon wheels were even bound with leather straps to reduce jolts. Among soldiers, these bundles were nicknamed “little mines” — they exploded so often en route.
Transport and Guard
The wagons of champagne marched near the center of the column, under close supervision. Sometimes they were given special guards, as if carrying the royal treasury: marauders and peasants alike knew the worth of the bubbling wine and tried to seize a crate or two.
The Risk of the Road
On rough tracks bottles detonated one after another. Troops joked that “the supply train thunders even without artillery.” Horses sometimes shied at the sound, halting the convoy, and officers demanded an inspection: “Those aren’t cannonballs?”
Field Consumption
At halts, officers ordered surviving bottles to be brought out. Servants opened them with extreme caution — often still in the sack or the crate, far from faces. Soldiers laughed: “Champagne fights worse than the enemy — but it always attacks by surprise.”
📌 Anecdote of 1812
A French officer recorded in his diary:
“Of the six crates of champagne I carried from Reims, half perished in the jolting. The rest we drank near Smolensk — each sip with a taste of gunpowder, smoke, straw, and a little of home.”
A Royal Outing in the Countryside
► The Halt:
Halfway along the journey the royal convoy would stop on a broad meadow. Tents were pitched, tables with white cloths unfolded. From the crates, bottles of champagne were lifted with care, dusted, and their corks inspected. Already along the road some had been lost — jolted into bursting — so fewer reached the table than expected.
► The Ritual of Opening:
The task of uncorking fell only to the most experienced valets. The neck was wrapped in linen, the cork gripped with both hands. No one wished to be the one who showered duchesses’ gowns or blinded a cavalier.
► The Atmosphere:
As the king raised the first glass, the whole entourage seemed to exhale in relief:
— Thank heaven, it made it here safely.
At one table ladies nibbled marzipans and pastries; at another, marshals devoured pâté and argued politics; and in the shadows, servants quietly drained what was left from bottles already cracked.
The Rebirth of Champagne
And yet it was precisely the struggle with these “underground and campaign cannons” that slowly transformed champagne from a devil’s caprice into a symbol of celebration. Only when glass grew strong, and the neck was secured with wire cages and foil, did the wine begin to shine in gold.
📌 A young apprentice enters a cellar for the first time, hears a blast, and nearly drops his lantern:
— Another revolution?!
The old worker laughs:
— No, lad. Not cannons. Just champagne learning how to live.
🔹 Then: In the 18th–19th centuries, with weak bottles and poor corks, cellar losses could reach 30–40% of the harvest.
🔹 Now: With modern glass technology and strict quality control, defects are negligible — only 0.1–0.3% of bottles may leak or “pop” during aging. Causes include microcracks in glass, excess pressure (champagne holds about 6 bar), or improper storage.
Safety for workers today:
• Cellar staff must wear protective goggles and gloves; in some houses also face shields.
• Bottles are stored in reinforced racks to prevent chain reactions.
• Accidents are very rare, but still possible: winemakers remind us that a champagne bottle holds more pressure than a car tire, and if it bursts, shards fly like bullets.
Today, cellar work is considered quite safe — but never without respect for the bottle. A “small explosion” remains part of sparkling wine’s nature.
Even in the 21st century, champagne carries memories of its “military past.” A bottle at 6 bar remains a tiny bomb in human hands. A rare pop can still startle a novice and remind old cellarmen that their craft requires not only skill but also respect.
Champagne no longer thunders like cannons in the vaults — yet it still whispers: celebration is born of risk.
🍾 …Cellar of a Champagne House, 21st Century
In the half-light, neat rows of green bottles stretch into the distance. A young worker —just starting his apprenticeship — gently turns a bottle in its wooden rack. Suddenly, from deep within the cellar, comes a sharp crack, like a gunshot. He flinches, nearly dropping his lantern.
— Mon Dieu! — he gasps.
The old cellarman, lamp in hand, only smiles:
— Don’t fear, lad. Just one of the old ones — she couldn’t take the years. You see, even glass grows tired with time.
He hands the apprentice a pair of heavy gloves:
— Remember this: champagne is a celebration, but a dangerous one. Treat it with respect.
The apprentice nods. Silence returns to the cellar. Only the faint dripping of wine, seeping into the earth, echoes in the distance — like a tiny sacrifice for thousands of future toasts.
📌 Thus we reach the end of the tale of champagne’s most dangerous enemy — its own bottles. Today they are symbols of festivity and prestige, but two centuries ago they roared like cannons, wounding vintners and ruining fortunes.
Now it is time to step back — back to the very beginning of our “champagne road,” its first milestone. Long before the inventions of Dupré, Widow Clicquot, or the ingenious English glassblowers, wine was already made, stored, and served here in Champagne.
The symbolic starting point is the year 496, the Baptism of Clovis. Chronicles tell us that at the coronation feast of the Frankish king, the wines of Reims and its surrounding lands were poured. It was here that champagne (still a silent wine) took its very first step — from local drink to a symbol of power and sacred majesty.
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