Wine Savvy Class
Who Invented Traditional Method Sparkling Wine?

Who Invented Traditional Method Sparkling Wine?

Introduction

Since French people have always proved to be among the best producers of fizz, thinking that they invented the painstakingly long traditional method isn’t weird to us.

However, they didn’t actually discover this method. They mastered it through the years, earning possibly the highest reputation for making extremely fine bubbles. Apart from the priced Champagne, great sparkling wines are present nearly everywhere in France, with the 7 famous crémant from Burgundy till Languedoc-Roussillon.

France has got the lion’s share for traditional method sparkling wines in terms of volume and value, but the very first mention of sparkling wine (not any wine but champagne…) in any language is in English not in French.

In 1676 Sir. George Etherege wrote in “the man of mode”:

Sir. George Etherege poetry

To the mole and the park

where we love till ’tis dark,

then sparkling champaign,

put an ends to their reigns;

It quickly recovers,

poor languishing lovers,

makes us frolick and gay, and drowns all our sorrows;

But, alas! We relapse again on the morrow.

Source: “The man of mode” (1676)

It’s finally time to discover the real story behind the fascinating world of traditional method fizz.

Figure 1: Old books always reveal some hidden truth (news.uchicago.edu, 2019)

The English Paradox

Moët & Chandon made us believe that Dom Pérignon invented champagne. However, he spent most of his life trying to eradicate bubbles that appeared naturally in his wines.

This suggests that he didn’t understand why they were appearing and therefore could not have deliberately replicated the process.

We can find the first evidence of champagne in London. Here, an eight-page paper was presented on 17th December 1662 to the newly formed royal society.

How could sparkling champagne be in English literature two decades before (even the French admit) the first sparkling champagne appeared? They had sparkling wine technology and used it to make still French wines fizzy.

So, what was missing until circa 1695 to French winemakers? The answer is a bottle that could withstand the internal pressure of sparkling wine, and an effective seal to maintain it. Unfortunately, none of the French “verriers” could match the consistency of strength of glass produced in England at that time.

To give you an idea, one producer in 1746 complained that out of 6,000 bottles of champagne he had bottled that year, only 120 bottles survived (that make 98% failure rate and a lot of wastage).

Figure 2: Some bottle of sparkling wine in the “pupitre” (it.lazenne.com, 2015)

The English, therefore, invented champagne and, just to give you an idea, they did it 6 years before Dom Pérignon set foot in Hautville’s. If this isn’t surprising enough, they did it more than 30 years before the French made their first sparkling champagne and almost 8 years before the oldest champagne house, Ruinart appeared.

But, how and why did still wine from Champagne end up being sparkling? By accidental refermentation, which caused the wine to become fizzy.

The cold northerly situation of Champagne caused the fermentation to stop prematurely every beginning of the winter when temperatures were too cold. This would restart once the wine was bottled and stored in the warmth of an English tavern.

As Merret pointed out in 1662, the English invented the concept of adding sugar into a finished wine, to provoke a second fermentation. Therefore, we wouldn’t be surprised if people called it the “Merret method” instead of Méthode Champenoise nowadays.

Dom Pérignon Achievements

It’s true that Dom Pérignon wasn’t responsible for the creation and discovery of the traditional method, but on the other hand, we have to give credit to him for other important innovations.

These are the creations the famous monk came up with:

  • producing a perfect limpid white wine from red grapes (Blanc de Noirs);
  • producing a well colored red wine conceiving the concept of cool harvesting (an “anticipation” to night-harvesting techniques which were developed by New World countries in the 1970s);
  • picking in several tries to obtain the ripest and healthiest grapes;
  • inventing the traditional champagne “coquard” press;
  • conceiving the art of assemblage to create a consistent and superior cuvée from several different vineyards;
  • reintroducing the cork stopper in France;
  • pioneering the use of “verre anglais“;

As you can see, he was a real innovator and his creations literally revolutionized the way winemakers produce premium sparkling wines nowadays.

Figure 3: The famous Dom Pérignon statue (guildsomm.com, 2019)

Conclusions

We were quite impressed when we found out that French people, especially Dom Pérignon, didn’t invent the best method to produce great bubbles. The name itself, Méthode Champenoise, could trick us into thinking that French people were responsible for it indeed (we hope we didn’t ruin your day with this article…).

Although great sparkling wines are all over the world nowadays, we gotta admit that champagne has a unique appeal! They learned how to master the technique becoming possibly the best produced in the world.


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