The Original Champagne Charlie - Charles Heidsieck Champagne

Featured in The City Magazine December 2016, and extra content online at Luxury London

Charles-Camille Heidsieck was the first merchant to take Champagne Stateside. A story of war, bankruptcy, espionage, and prison, there must have been something in the bubbles...

Revellers in the US bought 20.5 million bottles of Champagne last year, making it the second largest export market behind the UK for the celebratory tipple. And all those hangovers can be attributed to one Frenchman who saw that the New World needed some French flair: Mr Charles-Camille Heidsieck – the original Champagne Charlie.

He came from good vintage. As the nephew of Florens-Louis, the founder of what is now Piper- Heidsieck, and the son of Charles-Henri, a man, who in 1811 rode into Moscow ahead of Napoleon’s army with cases of champagne and his order book, ready to provide alcoholic service to whichever side won, Charles was never destined to a quiet life among Reims’ vineyards.

The real action began just before his 30th birthday. Not content with working for the family firm, Charles branched off and formed his own Champagne house, eventually storing his wines in ancient Roman caves below the town (almost 165 years on, the same caves are still used for the maturation process). Believing that France’s Champagne houses had successfully saturated Europe, Charles took a leap of faith and in 1852 crossed the Atlantic to North America, touring New England and New York, partying with the great and good, and selling his Champagne on a mass scale. When he returned to the US five years later, he arrived to banquet receptions and huge newspaper coverage, welcoming back ‘Champagne Charlie’.

He sold 300,000 bottles in 1857 alone.

The halcyon days didn’t last long. By 1861, America had collapsed into civil war, and with more than half of his money tied up in the US, Charles travelled back to settle up. His American agent, however, used new legislation which absolved the north from paying for cotton to claim that his debts were wiped clean. Charles had no choice but to make a clandestine journey to New Orleans in the Confederate South to claim his debts directly. Unfortunately for him, New Orleans was bankrupt, save for one of Charles’s clients, who owned a warehouse full of cotton. Charles accepted this as payment, and attempted to sneak it past the Union blockade that surrounded the city by using blockade running ships. These were sunk, along with his money.

Out of pocket and disheartened, Charles decided he’d sail to Mexico and escape to Europe. In order to help his safe travels, the French consul in the town of Mobile had Charles take a diplomatic pouch to New Orleans, from where he would sail. When he arrived, the city had fallen into Union hands, and Charles was arrested on suspicion of spying for the French. He denied knowledge of any information contained in the pouch – actually orders for more ammunition for the Confederate army – but was held in Fort Jackson, along the Mississippi, sparking what became known as the Heidsieck Incident.

It took six months, a petition from his wife and a letter from Napoleon III to Abraham Lincoln, to secure his release, by which time he was bankrupt and frail.

For once is his life, Charles then got lucky. The brother of his American agent offered some land in the US as payment for his sibling’s debts. The land was originally part of a 300-strong village that had grown to 300,000 inhabitants following a flood of refugees from the South.

Charles was now the owner of a third of Denver. He sold the land and returned his Champagne house to its former glory – the serene hilltop cellars expressing nothing about their owner’s remarkable story. One-hundred-and-sixty-five years later, the nickname may have been bestowed on countless bon vivants, but there will only ever be one true Champagne Charlie.