It was about the eighth decade of this century, when the renown of the Grand Monarque was yet at its apogee, and when for many years the soil of the province had not been profaned by the foot of an invader, that the still wine of the Champagne attained its final point of perfection. The Roi Soleil himself, we are assured by St. Simon, never drank any other wine in his life till about 1692, when his physician, the austere Fagon, condemned his debilitated stomach to well-watered Burgundy, so old that it was almost tasteless, and the king consoled himself with laughing at the wry faces pulled by foreign nobles who sought and obtained the honour of tasting his especial tipple.[65] An anonymous Mémoire[66] written early in the ensuing century (1718) states that, although their red wine had long before been made with greater care and cleanliness than any other wine in the kingdom, the Champenois had only studied to produce a _gray_, and indeed almost white, wine, within the preceding fifty years. This would place about 1670 the first introduction of the new colourless wine, obtained by gathering grapes of the black variety with the utmost care at early dawn, and ceasing the vintage at nine or ten in the morning, unless the day were cloudy. Despite these precautions a rosy tinge--compared to that lent by a dying sunset to the waters of a clear stream--was often communicated to the wine, and led to the term 'partridge's eye' being applied to it. St. Evremond, the epicurean Frenchman--who emigrated to the gay court of Charles II. at Whitehall to escape the gloomy cell designed for him in the Bastille--and the mentor of the Count de Grammont, writing from London about 1674, to his brother 'profès dans l'ordre des coteaux,'[67] the Count d'Olonne, then undergoing on his part a species of exile at Orleans for having suffered his tongue to wag a little too freely at court, says: 'Do not spare any expense to get Champagne wines, even if you are at two hundred leagues from Paris. Those of Burgundy have lost their credit amongst men of taste, and barely retain a remnant of their former reputation amongst dealers. There is no province which furnishes excellent wines for all seasons but Champagne. It supplies us with the wines of Ay, Avenay, and Hautvillers, up to the spring; Taissy, Sillery, Verzenai, for the rest of the year.'[68] 'The wines of the Champagne,' elsewhere remarks this renowned _gourmet_, 'are the best. Do not keep those of Ay too long; do not begin those of Reims too soon. Cold weather preserves the spirit of the River wines, hot removes the _goût de terroir_ from those of the Mountain.' Writing also in 1701, he alludes to the care with which the Sillery wines were made forty years before.