A Blast From The Past 💥 (Part 1)
Pop... and so are we already one month into 2022. January was named for the Roman god Janus, known as the protector of gates and doorways who symbolize beginnings and endings. Janus is depicted with two faces, one looking into the past, the other with the ability to see into the future. The Roman made promises to Janus and exchanged good wishes. Similar to what we do at 12 o’clock on New Year's Eve.
Janus am I; oldest of potentates;
Forward I look, and backward, and below
I count, as god of avenues and gates,
The years that through my portals come and go.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82)
As per tradition, wishes are exchanged and the sound of pops are heard from the popping of champagne, cava and prosecco. Champagne has become a worldwide symbol for a celebration. Bought a new house? Champagne! A birthday? Champagne! Bought a new boat? Smack that sucker against the boat!
Champagne has transcended its reputation as just an alcoholic beverage. Its prestige and status have earned a podium on the world stage, unlike any other beverage.
The but question; But when whas sparkling wine created?
Dom Perignon
The most famous and fairy-like story on the invention of sparkling wine is the tale of Dom Perignon. Dom Pérignon was a Benedictine monk who became cellar master of the Abbey of Hautvillers in Champagne in the late 17th century and he is credited with making the first sparkling Champagne. Up until this point, wine from Champagne was still, and either light red or “vin gris”, a pale onion skin rosé.
The story goes that the blind Dom Perignon, having uncorked his first bottle of sparkling Champagne, summoned his fellow monks, saying
“Come quickly, I am tasting the stars.”
There is a statue depicting this very moment outside the headquarters of Moët & Chandon today.
Unintentional
But if Dom Perignon did produce sparkling Champagne it was almost certainly unintentional. Wines from the Champagne region sometimes failed to ferment their sugars before the cold winter which causes the yeast to shut down. When the winter passes and the arrival of warm weather in spring, the yeasts will activate and produce carbon dioxide. This process is called Effervescence. With the wine still in a cask, the gas would simply leave the cask and a normal still wine would come out of the bottle.
During the later 1600s, Dom Perignon got help through the means of technological advancements for his unintentional finding such as stronger glass from England and the use of cork to seal the bottles rather than the big casks to keep the carbon dioxide inside the wine.
So the process of making sparkling wine in Champagne was neither controlled nor understood and was largely unwelcome and Dom Perignon certainly didn’t “invent” it. In fact, he may have been actively trying to prevent it. Ironically, he is coined as the inventor of sparkling wine
Dom Perignon is unmistakably, an important figure in wine-making introducing techniques such as the shallow basket press and making a white wine from red grapes. As well as treating grapes with care such as pressing them swiftly but gently to avoid the skin of the grapes colouring the wine. These foundations are still used in Champagne and other regions of winemaking.
To The Beginning
For the history of sparkling wine, we have to look no further than Mario Fregoni, professor of viticulture at the University of Piacenza. With his paper "A History of Sparkling Wines" ("La storia dei vini con le bollicine") he examines the development of sparkling wine from Roman times to the 19th century.
“The Romans were the first to have invented the technique of making sparkling wine by a process of double fermentation, with the addition of must or sweet wine"
Fregoni says that Greeks were aware of the process of Effervescence, they didn’t necessarily understand it so they thought it was a divine being putting bubbles in their wine, funny I usually think that after 3 bottles of champagne.
Where the Greeks were unaware, the Romans certainly were as they knew how to make sparkling wine deliberately. The Roman poet Lucan, was among the first writers to mention bullulae (the Latin term for sparkling wine), when he recorded that sparkling wine from Italy's Campania region was served at a grand banquet in honour of Caesar and Cleopatra. Lucan wrote about how the sparkling wine was created with a secondary fermentation process by adding sweet must from raisined grapes
Pragani’s words
"The history of wine tells us clearly that this technique, discovered by the Romans, was elaborated and sophisticated throughout the following centuries by other winemaking nations, such as France and Spain, the fact that the invention of sparkling wine is accredited to the legendary 17th-century monk, Dom Perignon, is a misconception. Dom Perignon’s champagne is nothing more than an elaboration of Italian spumante, using local grape varieties. The only difference is that the Romans put the wine in amphorae to ferment and the French put it in bottles to ferment. The principle is the same.”
An ever old tradition, Italians blaming the French for stealing culture and ofcourse vice versa. In part two, we will dive deeper into Dom Perignon’s journey of sparkling wine.