Seventeenth-century British connoisseurs would order their fine table wines from vintners in the Champagne region, and, as required under French law in those days, it would be sold in wooden barrels. The wines arrived without a hint of bubbles. Winemakers in the Champagne, in fact, were not legally allowed to sell their wines in glass bottles until the passage of a special royal decree given to the city of Reims in the 1720s. Unfortunately, without a sealed
