History of French wine of Aquitaine and the future King Henry II of England brought a large portion of southwest France under English rule. When Henry's son John inherited the English crown, he sought to curry favor among the Gascons by bestowing upon them many privileges-the most notable of which was an exemption among Bordeaux merchants from the Grand Coutume export tax. With this exemption and favored treatment in London, Bordeaux wine became the cheapest wine in the London market and gained immense popularity among the English, who call it claret. For over the next 300 years much of Gascony, particular Bordeaux, benefited by
History of French wine the Christian Church made many advances in French winemaking and viticulture with the study and observation of key vineyards sites, identifying the grape varieties that grew best in certain regions and discovering new methods of production. In 1531 it was a monk in the Languedoc region of Limoux that discovered the process of turning still wine into sparkling wine. Though the widespread tale of Dom Pérignon "inventing" the sparkling wine known as Champagne is inaccurate, the Benedictine monk nonetheless made several important contributions to the history of French wine. In 1668, Brother Pierre Perignon was appointed treasurer of the abbey