Champagne and Sparkling Wine

Champagne is a wine produced only within the region of France of that name and made only as specified and delimited by the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) laws. It is a sparkling wine, the overwhelming majority of which is white, made exclusively from three legal grapes: Pinot Noir, Meunier (also known as Pinot Meunier), and Chardonnay. Champagne has had a long presence in America; it was shipped through English wine merchants and brokers into the colonies starting in about 1735, coinciding with the very beginning of the international Champagne trade. By the 1850s, vintners in Ohio were making the first American sparklers.