They came, they saw, they quaffed champagne. One of France's most prized treasures, the original bubbly, is not original at all, according to one of the world's leading experts on the biochemistry of wines.

Rather than being invented by the French in the 17th century, sparkling wine was already being enjoyed by the Romans 2,000 years ago.

"The ancient Romans created a sparkling wine produced by the double fermentation of grapes, so Italy can justifiably claim paternity over this product,'' Professor Tran Ky, said yesterday.

A French citizen of Cambodian origin who teaches applied molecular biology at the University of Rheims, he cannot be suspected of chauvinistic bias.

The professor was in Rome to address a conference on sparkling wines at the prestigious Treccani Encyclopedia Institute in the run-up to the anticipated turn-of-millennium bubbly-fest. He took the opportunity to extol the stimulant properties of sparkling wines, offered in equal measure by the humblest spumante as by the most expensive French champagnes.

According to the professor, sparkling wine is a natural accompaniment to a romantic evening, because its bouquet stimulates the olphactory cells in the nose, connected to the part of the brain associated with memory and emotion, while the nitrogen oxide it contains acts as a vasco-dilator and favours erection.

"The consumption of champagne stimulates the production of 60 types of biochemical messengers which serve to sharpen our sensory perceptions, while the release of endorphines suppresses our inhibitions.'' And unlike Viagra, sparkling wine helps to prevent heart attacks.

The invention of champagne is generally credited to a French Benedictine monk, Dom Pierre Perignon, but the poet Lucan had already described the techniques used by ancient Roman vintners to produce a wine full of "bullulae'' -bubbles - in the first century AD.

The costly elixir was reserved for special occasions, lending its glow to the banquet offered in honour of Cleopatra By Julius Caesar. Professor Tran acknowledged that the French were still unrivalled when it came to quality.

"Nevertheless, there is a French saying: better a well-made spumante than a bad champagne.''