Dom Perignon
The monk who made champagne sparkle
By Peter M Smith, featured Sep 2006

Few people would associate a partially blind monk with sparkling champagne but until a certain Dom Perignon arrived at the Benedictine Abbey of Hautvillers champagne was simply a ‘still’, yet pleasant wine, the ‘bubbly’ had no bubbles.
Founded by St. Nivard in A.D. 650, Hautvillers was one of the most important monasteries in France during the Middle Ages, having provided nine Archbishops of Reims, and 22 abbots for other leading monastic houses as well as having a great reputation for the exquisite quality of its illuminated manuscripts. Like many ecclesiastical establishments, however, it suffered from the ravages of war, being burnt or pillaged by the English in 1449 and the French in 1544. When the Huguenots desecrated the buildings in 1562, the dispirited monks ‘retired’ to nearby Reims .
The monastery was eventually rebuilt and by January 1668 was home to 12 monks. In May, a 13th arrived from the Abbey of St. Vannes at Verdun and although only 29, he was given the job of cellarer, a position second only to the abbot. His name was officially Brother Pierre but history knows him as Dom Perignon.
Not a great deal is known about his life. His baptism was recorded in the archives of Sainte-Menehoud on 5th January 1639 and at the age of 19 he entered the Abbey of St. Vannes at Verdun. Before arriving at Hautvillers, he had spent some time at a Benedictine monastery at Alcantara in Spain and had worked in the vast cork forests surrounding the monastery where he may have found out about the use of cork as bottle stoppers. At Hautvillers, Dom Perignon was not only responsible for the vineyards; the maintenance and repair of the buildings’, the provision of clothing and the generation of income were all part of his job. One authority stated that he was also a money lender too, quick to seize land and property from anyone who defaulted on their payments.
But wine was so important, particularly at this time when the deep red wines of Burgundy were gaining greater favour with the Royal Family and Parisian society whilst demand for the lighter wines of Champagne was declining. Hautvillers Abbey didn’t actually own many vineyards but took tithes from the surrounding villages in either cash or kind. Dom Perignon always sought payment in kind, usually in grapes, wine or land. Within a few years, he had more than doubled the abbey’s acreage of vineyards and had huge new wine presses built to cope with the increased production.
Dom Perignon began altering the wine’s chemistry, by blending or ‘marrying’ different types of grapes. The result was a fine white wine. Then, he replaced the old stoppers of wooden pegs covered with soaked rags with carefully tapered corks. These new corks kept the wine hermetically sealed so that the natural carbonic gasses could not escape, thus allowing the sparkling bubbles to form. When he first tasted this new, lighter wine, he was so surprised that he exclaimed “Come quickly Brothers, I’m tasting stars”. By changing the shape of the bottles and using heavier glass, from England, he also avoided the old problem of exploding bottles. Now the demand for the wines of Champagne soared as those from Burgundy declined.
One contemporary of Dom Perignon wrote “never was a man more skilfull in the production of wine” and this skill remained with him up to the time of his death for “old and blind, yet he had such a sensitive palate that when they brought him grapes from the different abbey vineyards, he could tell by the taste exactly where they had been grown.”
By the end of the 17th century, the wines of Hautvillers were so much better than any others in the region that they were selling at more than double the normal prices. A letter from an Epernay wine merchant, Bertin de Rocheret stated that ‘mediocre’ wines cost 200 livres, ‘good’ ones between 400 and 500 livres but the ‘best’ wine, ‘from Huatvillers’, cost 900 livres. Further proof of their superiority came in the year of Dom Perignon’s death in 1715 when a certain D’Artagnan wrote that he wanted some champagne but that it had to come form Hautvillers “for frankly, it is the best”
A century after Dom Perignon’s death, property around Hautvillers, which had been confiscated during the Revolution, was out on the market in an attempt to boost the fragile French economy. The property included the abbey itself, though much of it had been desecrated, along with the adjoining vineyards. These were bought by a member of the Chandon family who fell in love with Madamoiselle Moet, creating one of the most famous champagne producing companies in the world. But they didn’t allow the name of Dom Perignon to be forgotten because they named their finest champagne, the ‘Cuvee de Prestige’ after the wine-making monk.
The company also gave the abbey church to the people of Hautvillers whose own church had been destroyed. Today, it contains two treasures, the relics of St. Helena and the resting place of Dom Perignon. In the ninth century, a priest from Hautvillers, Teutgise, went to Rome hoping to be cured of an illness. Cured through the intercession of St. Helena, he brought her remains back to Hautvillers where they remained until the Revolution. Then, they were taken to safety in secret by Dom Grossat but when he wanted to return them he was told they should go to a more ‘important’ place as Hautvillers was only a ‘mere’ parish church. After much negotiation it was agreed that the greater part of the relics should go to the church of t. Leu in Paris but some had to remain in Hautvillers. Close to the reliquary is a statue of Helena, which is decorated with the first bunch of grapes gathered each year. The tomb of Dom Perignon is in the chancel at the foot of the altar steps.
The grapes, gathered in September, are pressed and the ‘must’ collected and stored in vats until January when it is bottled and corked. After several years , the ‘dosage’, a mixture of sugar and old wine, is added. Then comes the final corking, wiring, labeling and wrapping. The church plays its part too in champagne production as, during the grape-picking season, services are frequently held earlier than normal to allow the workers as much time in the vineyards as possible.