Why Did Champagne's Inventor Try to Get Rid of the Bubbles？ (An Englishman Beat Him to It)
In 1668, a young monk named Dom Pérignon arrived at the Abbey of Hautvillers with one urgent job: stop bottles of local wine from exploding in the cellar. Winemakers called it "le vin du diable" — the devil's wine. Here's what almost everyone gets backwards about the man now credited with inventing champagne: he spent most of his career trying to destroy the bubbles, not create them.
The famous "I am drinking stars!" quote appears to be pure legend, invented roughly a century after his death. And six years before Pérignon even arrived at the abbey, an English scientist had already documented a method for deliberately making sparkling wine — with sturdier bottles built to survive the pressure.
In this episode:
Why Dom Pérignon actually hated the bubbles in his wine
The dangerous "devil's wine" that kept exploding in French cellars
Why the famous "drinking stars" quote is almost certainly fake
The Englishman who documented sparkling wine six years earlier
Why French royalty eventually reversed Pérignon's entire mission
Q: Did Dom Pérignon invent champagne? A: Not exactly — he spent most of his career trying to eliminate the bubbles from wine, considered a dangerous defect at the time. English scientist Christopher Merret documented a method for deliberately producing sparkling wine in 1662, six years before Pérignon arrived at his abbey.
Is there a "proud national invention" from your own country that actually started somewhere else, or as something nobody originally wanted? Drop it in the comments — that might be exactly what we cover next.
That Checks Out — turns out, it checks out.
#ThatChecksOut #Champagne #FrenchHistory
Sources: Smithsonian Magazine, The Conversation, DuVine, The Champagne Company
0:00 Intro — exploding bottles at the abbey
0:40 The reveal: he wanted to destroy the bubbles
1:00 The accident of cold winters
1:45 A dangerous, expensive defect
2:25 The "drinking stars" legend, debunked
3:15 Christopher Merret's 1662 paper
4:05 The English Paradox
4:45 Tastes shift at Versailles
5:20 The Church reverses course
5:45 The mirror moment & outro
#ThatChecksOut #Champagne #FrenchHistory #champagnehistory
Video Summary
AI GeneratedThis video debunks the myth that Dom Pierre Perignon intentionally invented Champagne. Instead, it reveals that Perignon spent much of his career trying to eliminate the \"devil's wine\"—the dangerous, exploding bottles caused by secondary fermentation—only to later refine the process once the French nobility developed a taste for bubbles.