1662 · London
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.
What happened
In December 1662 the English physician Christopher Merret presented a paper to the Royal Society describing how "vintners" added sugar and molasses to wines to make them "brisk and sparkling".
The significance is not that Merret invented anything. It is that he was describing a practice already established among London merchants, in a dated and preserved document, at a time when the Champagne region was not deliberately making sparkling wine at all.
The English had two advantages that mattered: coal-fired glass furnaces producing bottles strong enough to hold the pressure, and a reliable supply of cork.
Champagne’s own development towards deliberate sparkling wine came later and took most of the following century to become controlled rather than accidental.
This document is sometimes deployed as proof that "the English invented Champagne", which overcorrects in the other direction. It shows that deliberate secondary fermentation was described in England first; it does not make English merchants the originators of the Champagne method, which developed in Champagne over the following 150 years.
How firmly this is dated
Documented. Recorded contemporaneously. The date is not in question.
A paper presented to the Royal Society in December 1662 and preserved in its records. The document is not in dispute; what it demonstrates about practice at the time is a matter of interpretation.
People: Christopher Merret
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.
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.
17th century
Cork and the glass bottle
Strong glass and cork together made it possible to age wine — which changed what wine could be.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Comité Champagne — Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne
- The Oxford Companion to Wine — Oxford University Press