The legend dates Dom Pérignon's 'invention' of champagne

Tradition holds that on 4 August 1693 a Benedictine monk named Dom Pierre Pérignon, cellar master at the abbey of Hautvillers, tasted his sparkling wine and cried, “Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!” It is a wonderful line. It is also almost certainly invented — the quote first surfaced in a late-19th-century advertisement, and the date itself is symbolic, not recorded in any document.

The real Dom Pérignon, who died in 1715, was a meticulous winemaker. He pioneered careful blending of different grapes and crus and refined pressing methods that yielded pale wine from black grapes. What he did not do was invent the bubbles; sparkling wine predated him, and the modern method owes more to later figures.

Much of the myth was spun about a century after his death by a successor, Dom Groussard, eager to burnish the abbey’s fame. The legend stuck — and a luxury label later borrowed his name.