Wine myths
Dom Pérignon invented Champagne
“A blind monk called Dom Pérignon invented sparkling Champagne and cried "come quickly, I am tasting the stars".”
Sparkling wine predates him, he spent much of his career trying to prevent bubbles, and the famous quotation was written down in the nineteenth century as advertising copy.
The full answer
Pierre Pérignon was a real Benedictine cellarer at Hautvillers from 1668 until his death in 1715, and he was genuinely a significant figure — in blending across parcels, in pressing black grapes to make pale wine, and in raising quality generally.
Deliberate sparkling wine is documented earlier and elsewhere. An English paper presented to the Royal Society in 1662 by Christopher Merret described adding sugar to wine to provoke a second fermentation, six years before Pérignon arrived at Hautvillers.
Refermentation in bottle was, at the time, largely a problem. Bottles exploded, cellars were dangerous places, and much of the technical effort of the period went into avoiding it rather than achieving it.
The technology that made bottled sparkling wine practical was English coal-fired glass, strong enough to hold the pressure, together with reliable cork closures. Neither was his work.
The "tasting the stars" line appears in the nineteenth century, long after his death, in material produced to promote Champagne. There is no contemporary record of it.
None of this diminishes what he did. It just was not inventing Champagne, and no single person did.
He was an important and innovative winemaker whose work on blending and on pressing shaped the region. The abbey he worked at is still a Champagne landmark.
Why the belief persists
It is a very good story, and it has been the brand name of a famous cuvée since 1936, which gives it a permanent advertising budget.
A belief long held in the wine trade with no demonstrated mechanism behind it. Recording it is useful — readers encounter these constantly — but it must be labelled as what it is.
What would settle it: Not falsifiable as usually stated, which is itself the point.
In the timeline
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.
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 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