The Truth About Champagne And Caviar

As we ring in the new year, we may add a touch of glamour to our celebrations with two time-honored symbols of the good life, champagne and caviar. They're long associated with France and Russia — but there are some unexpected locales in the history of these luxuries.

Caviar is the elegant name for the salted eggs of the sturgeon, a fish long found in Russia.

"This something that has been part of Russian life since ancient times," Inga Saffron, the author of a book on caviar, told Sunday Morning correspondent Tracy Smith.

Saffron says the treat of the tsars was also a necessity for all Russians.

"They ate caviar because it was part of their religion," she said. "They were forbidden from eating meat for 200 days a year. And they had to eat various kinds of fish."

But sturgeon weren't found only in Russia. America, too, had a bountiful supply - and by the 1880s, the U.S. was the world's top caviar exporter. The caviar rush even had its own boomtown on the Delaware River, Caviar New Jersey. Over-fishing ended America's export dominance and today Caviar is known by a more prosaic name, Bayside, N.J.

Champagne is considered by many as an entirely French drink. Legend has it that Dom Perignon, a blind French monk, discovered champagne's sparkle, and exclaimed, "I have tasted the stars!"

But it was the English who actually uncorked the drink's effervescence when their flat wine turned foamy after improper storage.

"They discovered not only was it a tasty wine, but the slight sparkle, the slight bubbles were actually a novelty that could be used to liven up a party on a deadly grey British afternoon," Kolleen Guy, a professor at the University of Texas who has written a book on the history of the beverage.

Guy says the early stars of champagne-making were not even French.

"Many of the most popular champagnes — Moet, Mumm, Heidseick — These are not the names of Frenchmen," she said. "Nor were their founders Frenchmen."

Soon, the sparkling wine became the toast of royalty across Europe, but most famously in France. Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, once said that champagne is the only drink that leaves a woman more beautiful after drinking it.

In the film "Marie Antoinette," the queen toasts a new day by popping a bottle, but after the French Revolution, champagne's royal bubble had burst.

Champagne houses had to find a way to sell their bubbly to the common man and they did that with images of glamour and by reviving the starry legend of the French monk, Dom Perignon.

"So Dom Perignon made champagne the perfect accompaniment for toasting the virginal Victorian bride, as opposed to the court and the seduction of Madame Pompadour," Guy said.

Which is why today we christen ships, celebrate weddings and the new year with champagne that's more than French.