Legend and Evidence
Who Invented Champagne? Dom Pérignon and Christopher Merret
Champagne was not invented by a single person, and certainly not by Dom Pérignon. The first written description of a deliberate second fermentation comes from the Englishman Christopher Merret in 1662. The monk Pierre Pérignon was a quality pioneer in Champagne, but not the inventor of the bubbles.
Did Dom Pérignon Invent Champagne? The Legend
Few wine stories are told as often as the one about the monk who discovers the bubbles in the cellar. It has a real kernel of truth. Pierre Pérignon did live; he was a Benedictine monk and served as cellar master of the Abbey of Hautvillers near Épernay from 1668 to 1715. The abbey owned vineyards, sold wine, and needed an administrator who kept an eye on everything from pruning to the barrel. He fulfilled this role for almost fifty years.
What was later attributed to him goes far beyond that. The famous exclamation about tasting the stars, which he supposedly uttered, appears in no source from his lifetime. The Wine Journey tells this legend in full detail at its place of origin in Champagne. For the question of invention, one finding suffices: no document is known in which Pérignon describes or recommends a second fermentation in the bottle.
What Pierre Pérignon Actually Achieved
His merit lies in the vineyard and at the press. Pérignon is considered one of the first to deliberately blend grapes from different sites in Champagne to achieve a more balanced wine. This blend is called assemblage and remains the heart of almost every champagne today. A wine made from many villages evens out the weaknesses of individual vineyards and achieves a recognizable style year after year.
He also worked on pressing technique. Red grapes like Pinot Noir have colorless flesh; the color sits in the skin. Pressing quickly and gently yields a pale must, meaning white wine made from red grapes. This very principle lies behind today's term Blanc de Noirs. Many wine historians even believe that Pérignon saw the bubbles more as a flaw. In his time, sparkling wine was considered unstable, and bursting bottles meant losses.
Christopher Merret 1662: The First Description of Second Fermentation
The oldest reliable trace leads to London. On 17 December 1662, the physician and natural scientist Christopher Merret presented a report before the Royal Society, the then-young English society of scholars. His title was "Some Observations concerning the Ordering of Wines." It states that wine merchants added sugar and molasses to their wines to make them "brisk and sparkling."
This is the essence of what is known today as dosage: sugar added to a finished wine to trigger a second fermentation. The yeast converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and in a sealed vessel the gas remains dissolved in the wine. Merret did not invent the process; he described a practice that evidently already existed. However, his note is the first to record a deliberate second fermentation in writing. It was written six years before Pérignon became cellar master.
Why Wine Sparkled Back Then, and England's Role
It had long been known in cool regions that wine could sparkle on its own. In Champagne, autumn turned cold early, and fermentation stopped before the yeast had consumed all the sugar. In spring, temperatures rose, and fermentation resumed in the barrel or bottle. Anyone who had shipped the wine in winter received a sparkling drink in spring. It only became a fashion once people deliberately wanted the sparkle and could preserve it.
At first, it was easier to preserve in England. English glassworks fired their furnaces with coal rather than wood in the 17th century, producing hotter ovens and thicker, sturdier glass. Add to that the cork as a tight seal. Wine from Champagne often arrived in London by barrel and was only bottled there. Champagne therefore has a French origin and an English share in the technology. How the cloudy, unpredictable foam became a clear wine is shown in the next chapters.