Emperor Charlemagne, also known as Charles the Great and Carolus Magnus (his Latin name) was crowned Imperator Augustus in Rome on Christmas Day, 800 by Pope Leo III, and is therefore regarded as the founder of the Holy Roman Empire.
   Charlemagne was a born leader. He was a tall man of almost seven feet with blond hair and what has been described as a "merry face". He was also extremely fond of wine and he brought back wine making from the dark ages that preceded him.
   He didn’t like the idea that wine was pressed by people treading about in a big vat of grapes so he ordered that crushing of wine grapes no longer be done with the feet, but that a mechanical screw press be used. Also he detested the storage of wine in skins and ordered that it be kept in wooden kegs instead.
   One spring on the Rhine, he noticed the sunlight reflected off the water in a way that caused the snow to melt first on a hill facing south. He ordered a vineyard to be built there. Some say it became Germany's famous Schloss Johannisberg.
   Apparently Charlemagne was so fond of the red wine from his fine Corton vineyards that, in his enthusiasm, he would sometimes spill it, coloring his white beard. His wife felt the stains were hardly appropriate for her husband, the Holy Roman Emperor. To silence her complaints, he ordered some of the red-wine vines of Corton to be uprooted and replaced with white. And so was born one of the great Chardonnay wines of the world, Corton-Charlemagne.
   The ultimate indication of his affection for the vine occurred when he renamed the months of the year in his own language; October became "windume-monath", the month of the wine harvest.
   Indeed viticulture became so successful during Charlemagne's reign that there was an excess of wine and so "banvin" was imposed, which meant none of the tenants could sell their wine until the Lord had sold his. Charlemagne did something that forever endeared him to the French. He appropriated half a million square meters of land in the township of Vougeot, situated in the area of Burgundy and insisted that the land be planted with grape vines. Since the 18th century the vines here have produced the wines Clos Vougeot. Wines so beloved that even today, when French soldiers march past the land, they salute.