1668–1715 · Hautvillers, Champagne
Pierre Pérignon at Hautvillers
A Benedictine cellarer made real and lasting contributions to Champagne — none of which was inventing it.
What happened
Pierre Pérignon was cellarer at the Abbey of Hautvillers from 1668 until his death in 1715, responsible for its vineyards and its wine.
His documented contributions are substantial: blending wine from different parcels to make a better whole, pressing black grapes quickly and gently to produce pale juice, and improving quality and consistency generally. Assemblage remains central to how Champagne is made.
Much of his effort went into preventing refermentation, which at the time was a hazard rather than an objective. Bottles exploded, cellars were dangerous, and the process was uncontrolled.
The still wines of Champagne were his product. Deliberate, controlled sparkling wine came later, and depended on technologies — strong glass, reliable corks, and eventually an understanding of yeast and sugar — that were not available to him.
He did not invent Champagne, was not blind, and there is no contemporary record of "come quickly, I am tasting the stars". The quotation appears in the nineteenth century in material produced to sell wine, and the brand name dating from 1936 has kept it in circulation ever since.
How firmly this is dated
Attested. Well attested, with the precise date or the attribution reconstructed rather than recorded at the time.
Abbey records and an account written by a successor decades after his death. The outline of his work is well attested; the famous quotation is not, and appears first in nineteenth-century promotional material.
People: Dom Pierre Pérignon
What people get wrong
Corrections this event bears on directly.
What this follows from, and leads to
A timeline is a list; these are the links between its entries.
1662
Christopher Merret describes making wine sparkle
A paper to the Royal Society described adding sugar to wine to make it sparkle — six years before Dom Pérignon arrived at Hautvillers.
17th–19th century
The development of sparkling wine
Deliberate sparkling wine emerged gradually from several contributions — and Dom Pérignon was working to prevent bubbles, not create them.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Comité Champagne — Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne
- The Oxford Companion to Wine — Oxford University Press
Along the timeline
Before · 1662
Christopher Merret describes making wine sparkle
A paper to the Royal Society described adding sugar to wine to make it sparkle — six years before Dom Pérignon arrived at Hautvillers.
After · 17th–19th century
The development of sparkling wine
Deliberate sparkling wine emerged gradually from several contributions — and Dom Pérignon was working to prevent bubbles, not create them.