The 7,000-Year Prelude: Wine Before Champagne
Champagne didn’t invent wine. It inherited a tradition stretching back to the Zagros Mountains of modern-day Iran, where clay jars at Hajji Firuz Tepe held residues of fermented grape juice dated to 5400 BCE — making it among the oldest confirmed wine production in human history. By the time monks planted the first vines in the Champagne region around the 1st century AD, humanity had been drinking, fighting over, and worshipping wine for five millennia.
The Sumerians paid workers in beer 5,000 years ago in Uruk. The Hymn to Ninkasi — the world’s oldest surviving alcohol recipe — is a love poem to the goddess of beer, embedded in a clay tablet from roughly 1800 BCE. When Anchor Brewing Company recreated the recipe in 1989, the result tasted, improbably, “somewhat like champagne.”
In Macedonia, wine wasn’t a pleasure — it was statecraft. Alexander the Great’s royal banquets lasted three days. The Macedonians drank wine undiluted, which the Greeks considered barbaric. At one legendary drinking competition, 41 of Alexander’s men died of alcohol poisoning competing for 57 pounds of gold. Alexander himself may have died from the habit — his drinking was analyzed in the academic journal Addiction.
The Persians were more sophisticated. Herodotus recorded their decision-making process: deliberate upon affairs of weight when drunk, then reconsider when sober. If the idea survived both states of mind, it was policy. Wine-pourers held ritual status at court. DNA testing later proved there was no genetic connection between Shiraz grapes and French Syrah — one of wine history’s most persistent false legends.
And then there was Cleopatra, who bet Mark Antony she could spend 10 million sesterces on a single meal. She dissolved a pearl earring in vinegar and drank it. Lucius Munatius Plancus stopped her from dissolving the second one. The surviving pearl was later cut in two and placed in the ears of the Venus statue at the Pantheon in Rome.
Wine was power before champagne even existed. Champagne just perfected the branding.
When Monks Made Wine (And the Beard That Never Existed)
The legend says Charlemagne’s wife Luitgard ordered white grapes planted at Corton because red wine stained his magnificent white beard. The legend is entirely false. Charlemagne had no beard — historians agree near-unanimously. A denarius from 812-814 shows him clean-shaven. “L’empereur à la barbe fleurie” was artistic convention, not fact. The conversion to Chardonnay at Corton actually happened in the late 1800s under Louis Latour, roughly a thousand years after Charlemagne’s death.
What the medieval church did do — genuinely — was drive wine production across Europe. Christian expansion required wine for the Eucharist. Monks became the continent’s most careful viticulturists. And one Pope created what may be history’s first wine bank.
Pope Paul III, in the 16th century, appointed a personal wine taster and established the Vatican as a storage institution for wine — functioning, essentially, as a bank where wine was the currency. Pope Leo XIII later revived Vatican wine production during the phylloxera crisis of the late 1800s. As recently as 2024, the Vatican planted 2 hectares of Cabernet Sauvignon at Castel Gandolfo. The church’s relationship with wine has been unbroken for 1,700 years.
Meanwhile, in Istanbul, Ottoman sultans were drinking despite Islamic law prohibiting it. Sultan Selim II — nicknamed “the Sot” — repealed his father’s wine ban and replied to warnings about his drinking: “I live for today, and think not of tomorrow.” Sultan Murad IV was a heavier drinker who walked the streets in disguise executing other drunkards. The hypocrisy was formalized: an Ottoman gentleman told Lady Wortley Montague in 1717 that the wine prohibition “was meant for the common people… the Prophet never designed to confine those that knew how to use it with moderation.”
Everything You Know About Dom Perignon Is Wrong
Here’s what’s true about Dom Pierre Perignon: he was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Hautvillers in the late 17th century. Here’s what’s false: almost everything else.
Dom Perignon was not blind. He did not invent champagne. He did not invent the cork. He never said “Come quickly! I’m drinking the stars!” — that quote was fabricated by Dom Groussard in 1821 to promote tourism at Hautvillers Abbey, more than a century after Perignon’s death. (The full story of how every Dom Perignon myth unravels is worth reading on its own.)
The truth is more interesting. Sparkling champagne with corks was first drunk in London in the 1660s. The English were drinking bubbly champagne before the French. Dom Perignon actually tried to prevent bubbles — they were considered a flaw, a sign of poor winemaking. His real contribution was the art of blending grapes from different vineyards, a technique that remains the foundation of champagne production today.
The “blind tasting” attributed to his supposed blindness? It meant tasting wine without knowing which vineyard it came from. He could famously identify the origin of grapes by taste alone — but with his eyes wide open.
The Widow, the Emperor, and the Comet
Three figures in the early 1800s transformed champagne from a regional curiosity into a global luxury symbol. All three stories are extraordinary.
The Widow. Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin became a widow at 27 in 1805 and took over her husband’s champagne business using a legal loophole — widows could run businesses that married women could not. She invented the riddling table (remuage) in 1816, solving the sediment problem that had plagued champagne for centuries. She created the first known vintage champagne in 1810 and the first blended rosé in 1818. When Russia embargoed French wines, she packed champagne into coffee barrels. When Napoleon was exiled, she immediately chartered a Dutch ship to Russia — arriving before anyone else could restock the Tsar’s court. Sales rocketed from 43,000 to 280,000 bottles. She died at 89, still in widow’s black.
The Emperor. Napoleon met Jean-Rémy Moët at military school in 1782. The friendship lasted a lifetime. Archives show orders from “Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul” dated August 15, 1801. Napoleon visited Moët before every military campaign to stock up. In 1807, he toured the cellars — a marble plaque still commemorates the visit. Jean-Rémy built a replica of the Grand Trianon as guest quarters for Napoleon and Josephine. Before the Battle of Brienne in 1814, Napoleon distributed 300,000 bottles to his troops. His cavalry officers invented sabrage — opening bottles with sabres on horseback to impress the “rich young widow” Clicquot.
The Comet. The Great Comet of 1811 was visible for 260 days. That year’s harvest was the greatest vintage in living memory across Western Europe. Called “Napoleon’s Comet” — it was thought to portend his invasion of Russia — the vintage was marketed as “Comet Wine” at premium prices for years. Veuve Clicquot’s 1811 was the first truly modern champagne: sediment-free thanks to her new riddling technique. Bottles were marked with a star and “VCP.” The 1811 Château d’Yquem received a perfect 100 from Robert Parker in 1996. Cognac houses still put stars on their labels as homage to the comet, over 200 years later.
The Imperial Age: Assassination, Royalty, and Extravagance
Champagne became the drink of empire in the 19th century. Every court on earth wanted it. Some killed for it.
The Assassination-Proof Bottle. In 1876, Tsar Alexander II of Russia was so terrified of assassination that he demanded a new kind of champagne bottle from Louis Roederer: flat-bottomed, made from clear crystal glass, so no bomb could be hidden in the punt and no poison concealed in dark glass. By 1873, the Russian court was consuming 666,386 bottles per year — 27% of Roederer’s total production. The result was Cristal, the first prestige cuvée ever created. Alexander II was assassinated anyway in 1881, after surviving at least five previous attempts.
The Queen’s Table. England’s first champagne Royal Warrants were issued in 1884 under Queen Victoria. Bollinger received theirs first, followed by Pol Roger (1877) and Moët & Chandon (1893). J.J. Kanne wrote to Veuve Clicquot in 1868 confirming that “the wine was served at the Queen’s table every day.” The warrants survived until 2024, when King Charles III revoked them for Lanson, Krug, and Mumm. Lanson had held its warrant for 124 years.
The Greatest Party. When the Congress of Vienna convened in 1814-1815 to redraw the map of Europe after Napoleon’s defeat, the celebrations made the peace negotiations look modest. Vienna’s population swelled by one-third with 700+ envoys and entourages. The imperial table cost 50,000 florins per day. Total expenses over five months: 40 million francs. Prince Charles de Ligne observed: “Le Congrès ne marche pas, il danse” — the Congress does not go forward, it dances. The Congress launched the Viennese waltz as an international phenomenon.
War, Resistance, and the Cellars Underground
The two World Wars nearly destroyed Champagne. They also created its most powerful stories.
World War I. For 1,000 continuous days, German shells rained on Reims. But below the bombardment, 200+ miles of champagne caves sheltered an entire civilization. Veuve Clicquot’s cellars housed over 1,000 staff and civilians. Schools, chapels, hospitals, and butcher shops operated underground. Paul Poiret descended during an air raid and found “40 people seated at tables set with candelabras, hams and bottles of champagne.” By Armistice Day, 40% of Champagne’s vineyards were destroyed. Reims Cathedral — where 25 French kings had been crowned — was 80-90% ruined.
World War II. In the first weeks of Nazi occupation, soldiers stole 2 million bottles. Weinführer Otto Klaebisch was installed to oversee the plunder, demanding 400,000 bottles per week. Hitler himself — a teetotaler who added sugar to wine — hoarded 500,000+ bottles at the Eagle’s Nest, including Krug, Bollinger, Moët, and Salon.
But the resistance fought back with everything they had. Producers walled off sections of caves and hid their best vintages. The caves became Resistance headquarters. Count Robert-Jean de Vogüé of Moët led the Champagne resistance and was arrested by the Gestapo. Madame Bollinger gave Herr Klaebisch a chair too narrow for his girth — he never visited again. The chair remains at Bollinger today. Allied intelligence tracked Nazi troop movements by following champagne orders. When liberation came, Krug’s grandfather ran into the street with bottles for every passing American GI.
Cold War to Fall of the Wall: Champagne at History’s Turning Points
Winston Churchill drank an estimated 42,000 bottles of Pol Roger in his lifetime. His first recorded invoice dates to 1908: “1 dozen bottles 1895 Pol Roger.” By 1935, he was buying 100 bottles of the 1921 vintage, 240 pint bottles, and 10 magnums in a single order. He spent £515 per year on alcohol — 6% of his disposable income, three times a manual worker’s annual earnings — and called the Pol Roger cellars “the most drinkable address in the world.” After his death in 1965, Pol Roger bordered their labels in black for 12 years as mourning.
At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin negotiated the post-war world “amid a haze of cigar and cigarette smoke while feasting on caviar and imbibing vodka.” Stalin’s dinner on February 10 featured 45 toasts. Churchill was observed “drinking buckets of Caucasian champagne which would undermine the health of any ordinary man.” Stalin, meanwhile, had ordered staff to refill his glass with water instead of vodka — staying sober while his counterparts grew tipsy. A Republican congressman later cited drunkenness as reason to cut the State Department’s budget, claiming alcohol contributed to the “sellout at Yalta.”
On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. “We tucked several bottles of champagne under our arms,” one witness recalled. “You cannot imagine how emotional this was. Complete strangers fell into each other’s arms.” Five thousand people gathered at Brandenburg Gate. West Germans waited with flowers and champagne. Restaurants handed out free drinks. The celebration lasted for days.
On July 1, 1997, 156 years of British rule in Hong Kong ended at midnight. Prince Charles attended the ceremony. At the Mandarin Hotel the following morning, “socialites were knocking back champagne to the keening sounds of a Chinese orchestra” while “British grandees who had helped seal Hong Kong’s fate headed for their limos to the airport.”
The Modern Legends
Some champagne stories from the modern era have become so embedded in culture that people forget they started with a specific bottle, in a specific place, at a specific time.
James Bond and Bollinger. Ian Fleming’s original Bond drank Taittinger. In Casino Royale (1953), Bond called Taittinger Blanc de Blancs 1943 “probably the finest Champagne in the world.” But Bollinger made a deal with the film producers, and since 1973 — starting with Roger Moore in Live and Let Die — Bollinger has been Bond’s champagne. The partnership is one of the longest in cinema history. Lily Bollinger herself made it possible: she ran the house from 1941 to 1971 and gave what may be wine’s most quoted interview, telling the London Daily Mail in 1961: “I drink Champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory.”
The Shipwreck. In 2010, divers near the Åland Islands in Finland discovered 145 bottles of champagne in a Baltic Sea shipwreck — Veuve Clicquot from approximately 1839-1840, making them the oldest drinkable champagne ever found. The cold, dark, constant-pressure conditions of the seabed had created perfect aging. Tasting notes described “flowers that don’t exist here… like a forest on another planet.” One bottle sold for €30,000 at auction in 2011, setting a world record.
The First Spray. On June 10, 1967, Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt became the first all-American team to win Le Mans in an American car. In the euphoria, Gurney shook a bottle and sprayed it over Henry Ford II and Carroll Shelby. Foyt shouted: “That’s the boss you’re spraying!” The original bottle, signed by Gurney, was used as a lamp base for decades. Every podium champagne spray in motorsport traces back to that moment.
Why It Matters: Champagne as the Punctuation of History
Here’s what nobody writes about champagne: it’s not the drink that matters. It’s the moment. Every major inflection point in modern history — the end of wars, the fall of empires, the signing of treaties, the liberation of peoples — has been punctuated with champagne. Not because champagne is the best wine. Because champagne is how humans say this moment changes everything.
The Congress of Vienna. VE Day. The Berlin Wall. Mandela’s release. Every Formula 1 podium. Every New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Champagne is the period at the end of history’s most important sentences.
That’s not marketing. That’s 5,000 years of human behavior.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who actually invented champagne?
Nobody “invented” champagne. Sparkling champagne with corks was first drunk in London in the 1660s, making the English the first to enjoy bubbly champagne — before the French. Dom Perignon, widely credited as champagne’s inventor, actually tried to prevent bubbles, which were considered a flaw. His real contribution was the art of blending grapes from different vineyards.
What is the oldest champagne ever found?
The oldest drinkable champagne was discovered in a Baltic Sea shipwreck near the Åland Islands, Finland, in 2010. The 145 bottles of Veuve Clicquot dated to approximately 1839-1840, making them roughly 170 years old. One bottle sold for €30,000 at auction in 2011.
Why can California legally call sparkling wine “champagne”?
The Treaty of Versailles (1919) included Paragraph 275, which protected the Champagne appellation internationally. However, the US Senate voted 49-35 against ratifying the treaty. Because the US never signed, the Champagne name was never legally protected in America, which is why “California Champagne” remains technically legal today.
Did Dom Perignon really say “I’m drinking the stars”?
No. The quote “Come quickly! I’m drinking the stars!” was fabricated by Dom Groussard in 1821 to promote tourism at Hautvillers Abbey — more than a century after Perignon’s death in 1715. There is no historical record of Perignon ever saying this.
How many bottles of champagne did Churchill drink?
Winston Churchill is estimated to have consumed approximately 42,000 bottles of Pol Roger champagne during his lifetime. His first recorded purchase was in 1908 (“1 dozen bottles 1895 Pol Roger”), and he drank roughly a bottle per day at his home, Chartwell. He spent 6% of his disposable income on alcohol — three times a manual worker’s annual earnings.
Why is Cristal champagne in a clear bottle?
Cristal was created in 1876 for Tsar Alexander II of Russia, who was so paranoid about assassination that he demanded a flat-bottomed, clear crystal glass bottle. The flat bottom meant no bomb could be hidden in the punt (the indent at the base), and the clear glass meant no poison could be concealed in dark glass. It was the first prestige cuvée ever created.
When did the champagne spray tradition start in motorsport?
The champagne spray tradition began at Le Mans on June 10, 1967, when American driver Dan Gurney spontaneously shook and sprayed a bottle over Henry Ford II and Carroll Shelby after winning with co-driver A.J. Foyt. Every podium celebration in motorsport traces back to this moment.
What happened to champagne during World War II?
In the first weeks of Nazi occupation, German soldiers stole 2 million bottles from Champagne. A Weinführer (wine leader) named Otto Klaebisch was appointed to oversee the systematic plunder, demanding 400,000 bottles per week. Producers fought back by walling off cave sections to hide their best vintages, and the champagne caves became headquarters for the French Resistance. Hitler personally hoarded over 500,000 bottles at the Eagle’s Nest, despite being a teetotaler.
This article draws on research from over 120 primary sources including the Smithsonian, UNESCO, Nobel Prize Organization, Churchill Archives, Imperial War Museums, and official champagne house records. Explore the Champagne Odyssey trail to visit these historic sites, or discover hidden champagne experiences beyond the famous cellars.
