1914 Moët et Chandon Champagne found in Maldon house clearance

He was involved in a Maldon house clearance when the dusty bottle turned up.

He knew straight away that it must be old, but even he was shocked when he wiped down the soiled and slightly faded label to reveal the date.

It turned out to be a sealed and complete half-bottle of Moët et Chandon Dry Imperial 1914.

So how did a 107-year-old wine from Epernay end up amongst flowerpots and tools and why had it never been drunk?

According to the experts, Moët 1914 is “a famous long-lived vintage of the house” and can fetch very high prices.

On its centenary in 2014, an identical half-bottle realised £294 at an auction of fine wine at Christie’s.

But there is more to this remarkable survival than its monetary value – it belies a story of tragic proportions, a tale of wine and war, and it represents a tangible, but hidden clue to just how it ended up in our town.

The Great War, that ill-termed “war to end all wars”, began as we all know in 1914.

The dry, chalky plateau of the Champagne region quickly found itself on the front line, between the German and Allied armies.

Beautiful Reims Cathedral was shelled and gutted by fire, but in early September the German invasion began to falter and its forces were temporarily pushed back.

The British Tommies enjoyed a drop of wine

Just a week later the Champagne grapes were ripe and ready for picking.

With conscripted men fighting at the front, women and children hurriedly worked amidst gunfire and shelling to bring in the harvest

German snipers cruelly targeted and killed 20 of the French children, but remarkably the task was completed and the 1914 vintage was safe.

The war raged on and the vineyards became criss-crossed by trenches, the caves doubled as shelters and soldiers gained some temporary release from the horrors by drinking Champagne - both looted bottles and those given to them by grateful locals.

The 1914 vintage became known as “Les petits enfants” in memory of those murdered children, and although Champagne takes a good three years to be released, there was no call for the 1914 wine in 1917.

It was only eventually bottled after the Armistice of 1918 and, when it was finally released, the significant year made it much sought after by the military.

Many bottles were bought or gifted to soldiers and it was used to toast anniversaries in 1924 and 1934 at many regimental dinners.

The bottle of Moet et Chandon

It is highly likely that the Maldon shed discovery is part of that fascinating story, but all these years on it is almost impossible to find out which soldier originally had it.

In his speech in 1921, General Horne, when unveiling Maldon’s war memorial said that “out of a population of 5,000, 900 men had joined up”.

He went on further to say that, of those “750 men returned to Maldon”.

With hindsight, and as a result of detailed research, we know that even those shocking statistics were flawed and any one of those survivors could have been the keeper of that precious little bottle.

Even though all of our veterans have now gone, that sealed bottle is still around and continues to hold a living, Great War nectar that was born in tragedy and somehow continues to remind us of those Maldon soldiers.

A generation whose courage, in the words of that great military historian Richard Holmes, “lifts my spirits and break my heart”.

Maldon war memorial

From now on, every time we celebrate at home with an (albeit much younger) bottle of Champagne, I will raise a glass to their memory to ensure that they (and those French children) are not forgotten.