17th–19th century · England and Champagne
The development of sparkling wine
Deliberate sparkling wine emerged gradually from several contributions — and Dom Pérignon was working to prevent bubbles, not create them.
What happened
Wine in cool northern regions often stopped fermenting in winter and restarted in spring after bottling, producing unintended fizz. It was widely regarded as a fault, and bottles regularly exploded.
The English physician Christopher Merret described the deliberate addition of sugar to produce sparkle in a paper to the Royal Society in 1662, some years before the practice was formalised in Champagne.
English glass, made in coal-fired furnaces, was stronger than French glass and could survive the pressure — a genuine technical precondition.
The champagne method as practised today was assembled over the following century and a half: Veuve Clicquot's riddling table in the early nineteenth century solved sediment removal, and improvements in measuring sugar made pressure predictable rather than dangerous.
Dom Pérignon did not invent Champagne, and did not say "come quickly, I am tasting the stars" — that line first appears in a nineteenth-century advertisement. He was a capable cellar master whose documented work included blending, improving white wine from black grapes, and reducing the unwanted bubbles that were bursting his bottles.
How firmly this is dated
Attested. Well attested, with the precise date or the attribution reconstructed rather than recorded at the time.
A composite of documented moments — Merret 1662, the development of English glass, nineteenth-century riddling and disgorgement — rather than a single dated event.
What people get wrong
Corrections this event bears on directly.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Comité Champagne — Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne
Along the timeline
Before · 1668–1715
Pierre Pérignon at Hautvillers
A Benedictine cellarer made real and lasting contributions to Champagne — none of which was inventing it.
After · 17th–18th century
Madeira and the accidental discovery of heat ageing
Wine shipped as ballast through the tropics arrived improved, and the effect was then reproduced deliberately.