44 Fun Facts About Champagne

Which three grapes are used to make almost all champagne?

Pinot noir, Pinot meunier and Chardonnay: the two Pinots are black grapes, but their juice runs clear, so quick, gentle pressing keeps the wine white.

How does the pressure inside a champagne bottle compare with that in a car tyre?

About three times as high: five to six bar builds up as the wine ferments in the bottle, which is why the glass is thick and built to withstand far more.

Which 1919 treaty protected the name Champagne?

The Treaty of Versailles obliged Germany to respect French rules on regional wine names, repeating a protection for Champagne first agreed at Madrid in 1891.

Which sparkling wine from southern France, recorded by monks in 1531, predates champagne's bubbles?

Blanquette de Limoux came from the abbey of Saint-Hilaire, where wine was bottled before its first fermentation had finished, trapping the fizz.

Which English scientist's 1662 paper explained that adding sugar before bottling makes wine sparkle?

Christopher Merret told the Royal Society in 1662 that adding sugar to finished wine made it sparkle, six years before Dom Pérignon reached Hautvillers; England's coal-fired glass could take the pressure.

Dom Pérignon was a monk of which religious order?

Dom Pierre Pérignon was a Benedictine monk and cellar master at the Abbey of Hautvillers from 1668 until his death in 1715; ironically he worked to keep bubbles out of the wine.

Which champagne house released the first Dom Pérignon, a 1921 vintage, in 1936?

Moët & Chandon shipped the first bottles to New York aboard the liner Normandie; the Dom Pérignon name had come from Mercier in 1927 as a wedding present between the two families.

Which champagne house, founded in Reims in 1729, is generally regarded as the oldest?

Ruinart began when Nicolas Ruinart sent 'wine with bubbles' to his cloth customers as gifts; within six years the wine had outgrown the cloth trade, which he gave up.

Moët & Chandon was founded in 1743 by whom?

Claude Moët, a wine trader, founded the house in 1743; his grandson Jean-Remy made it famous, and the Chandon name was added in 1833 when son-in-law Pierre-Gabriel Chandon joined the firm.

Who is credited with inventing the riddling table for clearing champagne?

Madame Clicquot devised the riddling table in 1816: bottles sit neck-down in angled holes and are turned until the sediment settles against the cork, ready to be removed.

Veuve Clicquot's label has been which distinctive colour since the late 19th century?

The yellow label dates from 1877, when the house registered its distinctive orange-yellow as a trademark; the firm had been founded in Reims in 1772 by Philippe Clicquot.

What is the French name for riddling, turning bottles so the sediment collects in the neck?

Remuage is the riddling: bottles in a pupitre are turned and tilted a little each day over several weeks until they stand neck-down with the sediment gathered on the cap.

Which champagne label term, despite its name, marks a wine sweeter than Brut?

Extra dry holds 12 to 17 grams of sugar per litre, above Brut's limit of 12, so anyone after the driest glass should look instead for Brut nature, which has no added sugar.

The dry style labelled 'Brut' was created for the British market in the 1870s by which house?

Pommery made its 1874 vintage far drier than usual to suit London tastes, when champagne was normally very sweet; Perrier-Jouët had already tried an unsweetened 1846 vintage.

What is the wire cage that holds a champagne cork in place called?

A muselet: Adolphe Jacquesson devised the wire cage in 1844 in place of the cord once used to tie corks down, and by tradition it takes six half-turns to open.

Which champagne house, first seen in Live and Let Die in 1973, became James Bond's regular on-screen choice?

Bollinger took over on screen from Dom Pérignon, which Sean Connery's Bond nearly used as a weapon in Dr. No and drank in Goldfinger.

Cristal, considered the first prestige cuvée, was created in 1876 for which ruler?

Cristal was created in 1876 for Tsar Alexander II of Russia, the house's most important customer, who feared assassination and was indeed killed by a bomb in 1881.

Which champagne house makes a prestige cuvée named for Sir Winston Churchill, its most famous devotee?

Pol Roger launched the Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill with the 1975 vintage, released in 1984; Churchill drank the house's wine for decades, and it put a black border on its labels when he died in 1965.

Which house makes the all-Chardonnay Comtes de Champagne and planted vines in Kent in 2017?

Taittinger chose Kent because its chalky soil and mild climate resemble Champagne's, becoming the first champagne house to invest in making English sparkling wine.

Perrier-Jouët's flower-painted Belle Epoque bottle was designed by which Art Nouveau artist?

Emile Gallé, the Nancy glass artist, decorated magnums with Japanese anemones for Perrier-Jouët in 1902; the house revived the design in 1969 for its Belle Epoque cuvée.

The Champagne riots of 1911 saw growers dump grapes and wine trucked in from which region?

Growers stopped loads of Loire grapes that merchants were passing off as Champagne and tipped them into the river, then stormed the warehouses of producers accused of fraud.

Dan Gurney started the podium champagne spray tradition after winning which race in 1967?

At the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans, Dan Gurney and A. J. Foyt beat the Ferraris in a Ford Mk IV; on the podium Gurney shook the bottle and sprayed the crowd, and the tradition stuck.

Which biblical king's name goes on a 15-litre champagne bottle, twenty bottles' worth?

Nebuchadnezzar: 15 litres, or twenty standard bottles; such giants are generally filled with champagne that fermented in standard bottles or magnums.

A magnum holds how much champagne?

A magnum holds 1.5 litres, two standard bottles; it is thought to age more gracefully because the same cork and headspace serve twice the wine, giving less oxygen per litre.

Legend falsely says the champagne coupe was moulded on which French queen's breast?

Marie Antoinette could not have been the model: the coupe was being made in England around 1663, almost a century before she was born.

Which town south of Reims has an Avenue de Champagne lined with famous houses above miles of chalk cellars?

Épernay's Avenue de Champagne sits on some 110 km of cellars; locals call it the most expensive street in the world for the millions of bottles ageing underneath.

The cathedral of Reims, the region's largest city, was the traditional site of what?

Reims cathedral was the coronation church of French kings, the last being Charles X in 1825; the anointing oil came from the Holy Ampulla, said to have been brought by a dove for Clovis's baptism.

Champagne's hillsides, houses and cellars gained which status in 2015?

World Heritage Site status covers the cellars as well as the slopes: many began as old chalk quarries, later linked by galleries to store and age the wine.

Sabrage, opening a bottle with a sabre, is traditionally linked to the light cavalry of which leader?

Napoleon's hussars are said to have opened bottles with their sabres on horseback. No sharp edge is needed: a knock where the seam meets the lip lets the pressure inside snap off the neck.

Which champagne style is made from Chardonnay alone?

Blanc de blancs is made only from white grapes, in practice Chardonnay; blanc de noirs is the reverse, a white wine pressed from the dark-skinned grapes.

Which usual feature was left off the first Cristal bottles so that no explosive could be hidden there?

The punt in the base: Cristal's wary imperial buyer is said to have wanted clear glass and a flat bottom so that nothing could be concealed, and the bottle keeps that shape.

Champagne's vineyards line the valley of which river, the scene of two great World War I battles?

The Marne valley is one of Champagne's main vineyard districts; the region lies only about 160 km east of Paris, which has put it in the path of invading armies for centuries.

Who were the first to plant vineyards in the Champagne region?

The Romans brought vines here, but an imperial ban on new vineyards in Gaul held the region back until it was lifted in the late 3rd century.

Which champagne house, founded in 1776 and renamed by an heir in 1833, supplied the Russian imperial court?

Louis Roederer inherited the house from his uncle in 1833, gave it his name and chased export markets; Russia mattered so much that the imperial court later named it official supplier.

What does 'Veuve' mean in the name of the champagne house Veuve Clicquot?

Widow: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot was 27 when her husband died in 1805, and she took over the business herself at a time when few women ran companies.

Which 1735 painting by Jean-François de Troy is thought to be the first to show a bottle of champagne?

The Oyster Luncheon (Le Déjeuner d'huîtres) was painted for Louis XV's private dining room; several of the diners look up to follow a cork as it flies.

Which term replaced 'champenoise' for bottle-fermented sparkling wine made outside Champagne after a 1994 EU ruling?

Méthode traditionnelle (or classique) is the permitted term; the European Court of Justice upheld the ban on 'méthode champenoise' in 1994, and South Africa uses Cap Classique.

As of 2025, which luxury group owned the champagne brands Krug, Mercier and Dom Pérignon?

LVMH was formed in 1987 when Louis Vuitton merged with a champagne-and-cognac group; Veuve Clicquot had been bought by Louis Vuitton only the year before.

What is it called when a champagne bottle's neck is frozen and the plug of lees ejected?

Disgorgement (dégorgement): the neck is frozen, the crown cap is removed and the pressure shoots out the icy plug of lees before the dosage tops up the bottle.

Who owns nearly 90% of Champagne's vineyards?

Independent growers, more than 16,000 of them, own most of the vines, yet the famous houses account for over two-thirds of sales and 90% of exports.

On a champagne label, what does the producer code 'RM' stand for?

RM stands for récoltant manipulant, a grower who makes champagne from his own grapes, so those two letters are how drinkers pick out a 'grower champagne'; NM marks a house that buys grapes in.

What did 18th-century cellar workers wear to guard against spontaneously bursting bottles?

A heavy iron mask shielded cellar workers from flying glass: one bursting bottle could set off its neighbours, and cellars could lose a large share of their stock.

Because bottles exploded and corks popped, early sparkling champagne earned what nickname in France?

'The devil's wine' (le vin du diable): bursting bottles and flying corks seemed diabolical at a time when bubbles were considered a fault, and Dom Pérignon worked to prevent them.

Which cocktail tops a dash of crème de cassis with champagne?

Kir Royale swaps the white wine of a plain Kir for champagne; the drink takes its name from Félix Kir, the mayor of Dijon who served it to visiting delegations.