When and why was the sparkling wine that comes from the Champagne region of France considered the best type of sparkling wine?

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"In 987, Hugh Capet was crowned King of France at the cathedral Reims. At the coronation banquet, the local wines of the regions were served. The city became known as the spiritual capital of France and for the next eight centuries, monarchs would follow the tradition of Capet and hold their coronations in Reims. The association of the region with royalty did much to further the reputation of the region's wine." This wine, however, was not the bubbly champagne that we know today. It was developed in the 1th century. "The English were one of the first who saw the tendency of Champagne to sparkle as a desirable trait and tried to understand why it did bubble. In 1662, the English scientist Christopher Merret presented a paper detailing how the presence of sugar in a wine lead to it eventually sparkling and that by adding sugar to a wine before bottling it, nearly any wine could be made to sparkle. This is one of the first known accounts of understanding the process of sparkling wine and even suggest that British merchants were producing "sparkling Champagne" before the French Champenois were deliberately making it.[3] The popularity of sparkling Champagne steadily grew. In 1663, the British poet Samuel Butler penned the first written English reference to "brisk" (i.e. frothy) Champagne in his poem Hudibras. The 1698 George Farquhar play Love and a Bottle featured one of the characters marveling at the steady stream of bubbles in a glass of a Champagne. As the popularity of sparkling Champagne grew in London, other European courts began to discover the bubbly curiosity-including the French who had previously despised the bubbles as a wine fault. ... Following the death of Louis XIV in 1715, his nephew Philippe II, Duke of Orléans became the Regent of France. The Duke of Orléans enjoyed the sparkling version of Champagne and featured it at his nightly petits soupers at the Palais-Royal. This sparked a craze in Paris as restaurants and fashionable society sought to emulate the Duke's tastes for the bubbling wine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Champagne It was the original, and is still the best! Dec 31 08, 9:12 PM