The Myths of Dom Perignon

Every great wine has a story. And the wine known as Dom Pérignon has numerous stories that may be fact or fiction, marketing genius or a case of broken telephone.

It is widely believed that the Benedictine Monk Dom Pierre Pérignon “invented” Champagne as we know it. However, this myth is somewhat questionable.

Dom Pérignon did arrive at the Abbey of Hautvillers in 1668 in the Vallée de la Marne where he contributed many things to the wines from Champagne, but “inventing” it was not one of them.

This misconception might be common because Pérignon is credited as saying “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars”, in reference to his tasing of Champagne for the first time. However, this seems to be a marketing tactic. In 1852, Pérignon successor Dom Groussard gave an account of Pérignon"inventing" Champagne, among other exaggerated tales about the Abbey in order to generate historical importance and prestige for the church.

Another tale that may be fact or fiction is that Pérignon found a stronger bottle to hold Champagne. You see, during the early production years of Champagne, the wines would start to re-ferment in the spring once the weather warmed up, and the bottles would explode. This was a problem. Dom Pérignon was said to have solved the problem by using stronger glass bottles.

At the time most wines were bottled in glass that was made in France. The fires used to produce the glass were heated with wood and the resulting bottles lacked the strength needed to withstand the pressure of the sparkling wine. The English were using coal to heat their fires and as a result the fires were hotter and thus produced stronger glass. This was one contribution that Pérignon very likely made to Champagne, but there is some conflicting evidence on both sides.

Another story is that Pérignon was known to be an exceptional taster and would often taste a single grape “blind” and be able to identify the vineyard from which the grape came. This gave rise to another myth which was that Pérignon was actually blind. Yet there is no proof of this.

Another tale people like to tell is that he was the first to blend wines made from different vineyards to create a wine that was better than the sum of its parts. Maybe that was the case or maybe it was that he blended the grapes from different vineyards before being pressed. We can’t really be sure.

What is a known fact is that the Dom Pérignon brand was launched by Robert-Jean de Vogué in 1936 as the first commercially available brut prestige cuvee using wine from the 1921 vintage. Louis Roederer originally produced Cristal as the first prestige cuvee in 1876, but it was sweet and was not commercially available. Prior to 1927, the brand name 'Dom Pérignon' was owned by Mercier and was a gift to Moet when Francine Durant-Mercier married Paul Chandon. That gift paved the way for Moet to market 'Dom Pérignon’. The rest is factual history.