Champagne in popular culture

Champagne has featured prominently in popular culture for over a century, due in part to a long history of effective marketing and product placement by leading champagne houses and their representatives, such as CIVC. In time this created an association of Champagne with luxury and exclusivity. The popularity and positive attributes associated with Champagne has caused many other sparkling wine producer not located in the French wine region of Champagne, to incorrectly use the name "Champagne" to describe their wines.

Early history
Although sparkling wine was invented in in the Limoux area of Languedoc in 1535, the wine we know today as Champagne was first produced in the French region of the same name around 1700. For centuries prior to this, still wine from the region had been served as part of coronation festivities throughout Europe, and the French aristocracy had offered it in in tribute to foreign kings, associations with celebration and occasion which survive to the present day. When the méthode champenoise was introduced into the region by Dom Perignon, its ready association with luxury and power brought the unique sparkling wine from Champagne to the fore. The leading practitioners devoted considerable energy to creating a history and identity for their wine, associating it and themselves with nobility and royalty. Careful advertising and marketing associated champagne with prestige, luxury, festivities and rites of passage, coinciding with an emerging middle class looking for symbols of upward mobility.

Popular demand
Successful marketing during the Industrial Revolution helped to firmly establish Champagne's reputation among the middle class and affluent elite of the time. The wine came to symbolize the "good life" to which all people could aspire. It also brought charges of decadence and indulgence. As the humorist Mark Twain once commented, "Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right."

Towards the end of the 19th century, with a new cohesion in social groups based on economic choices, the beginnings of consumer culture brought Champagne to the fore as a delineator of class and status, becoming what has been described as a "centrepiece of bourgeois society". This came about in part by the usual, informal pursuit of traditional practices and social norms. However, there was a great deal of careful and deliberate generation of rituals and images surrounding Champagne, not by any one agency or department, but as a result of widespread commercial efforts to market and popularise its consumption.

The "story" of Champagne wine was gradually re-told, effectively suppressing outdated and unfashionable ideas and images and promoting more desirable ones. This served not only the interests of Champagne négociants but the French nation as a whole; by the first World War, Champagne had become a prominent and powerful symbol of the nation's status as a producer of quality goods in general, and vanguard of style and culture worldwide. It became, in effect, a major symbol of France During World War II, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, once motivated the British forces with the claim "Remember, gentlemen, it's not just France we are fighting for, it's Champagne!"

Marketing and placement
In 1866 the famous entertainer and star of his day, George Leybourne, began a career of making celebrity endorsements for Champagne. The Champagne maker Moët commissioned him to write and perform songs extolling the virtues of Champagne, especially as a reflection of taste, affluence, and the good life. He also agreed to drink nothing but Champagne in public. Leybourne was seen as highly sophisticated and his image and efforts did much to establish Champagne as an important element in enhancing social status. It was a marketing triumph, the results of which endure to this day. The marketing success of Champagne during the "Belle epoque", also on the export markets, is shown by the 1882 comment by the British author and oenophile Henry Vizetelly on how Champagne had become mandatory at all launchings, inaugurations and celebrations.

In music from the era, especially in music hall and beer hall venues, tunes such as "Champagne Charlie" and "Ruinart-Polka" were very popular. The "Charles Heidsieck Waltz", after the pioneering Champagne producer, was an orchestral piece composed by Paul Mestrozzi which debuted in 1895 in honour of the Austrian emperor, accompanied by the presence of the wine itself.

The Louis Roederer brand Cristal has seen increased popularity due to its association with Hip hop artists.

In movies
One of the most long-lasting associations of champagne and popular culture belongs with the Ian Fleming's fictional spy character James Bond, who is portrayed as a frequent drinker of champagne prestige cuvées. A count of over 22 Bond films reveals 35 occasions on which the character was portrayed drinking champagne, of which 17 were Bollinger, preferably Bollinger R.D., and 7 were Dom Perignon.

Several movies have given Champagne notable prominence.
 * Casablanca - 1942 film that includes many references to Champagne
 * An Affair to Remember - 1957 film where rosé Champagne holds a symbolic meaning for the two protagonists
 * Gigi - 1958 film that includes the song "The Night They Invented Champagne"

Marilyn Monroe was reputed to have taken a bath in 350 bottles of Champagne.