4th August 1693: French Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon allegedly invents champagne

There is no evidence that Pérignon ever exclaimed the phrase attributed to him, ‘Come quickly, I am drinking the stars’ after tasting sparkling wine. The earliest known use of that phrase is in a champagne advertisement from the 1880s, nearly 200 years after the monk’s apparent exclamation. Secondly, and most importantly, Dom Pérignon did not invent champagne. As the cellar master at the Benedictine abbey in Hautvillers he actually dedicated much of his time to researching how to avoid making sparkling wine.

Sparkling wine was a problem for Dom Pérignon and his contemporaries because the build-up of carbon dioxide from a secondary fermentation inside the bottle could cause it to explode without warning. In a cellar, the proximity of the exploding bottle to other bottles could set off a devastating chain-reaction which led to sparkling wine becoming known as le vin du diable or ‘the devil's wine’.

Developments in English glassmaking in the 17th Century created bottles could withstand the additional pressure of sparkling wine. Records from the time, including a paper presented to the Royal Society in 1662, suggest that it was the English scientist Christopher Merret who first developed the process of making sparkling wines through secondary fermentation.

Although Pérignon did not invent champagne, he did make a significant contribution to the development of the drink as we know it today. In particular, he mastered the technique that allows winemakers to produce white wines from red grapes – something that is an important part of the champagne process.