50 Fun Facts About Champagne

Which three grapes are used to make almost all champagne?

Tiny amounts of Pinot blanc, Pinot gris, Arbane and Petit Meslier are also permitted.

Roughly what pressure builds up inside a bottle of champagne?

That pressure is what shoots out the frozen plug of yeast sediment during disgorgement.

The name 'Champagne' has been legally protected under an international treaty signed in which year?

Under EU law and the Madrid system the term is reserved for sparkling wine from the region; even 'méthode champenoise' was banned by an EU court in 1994.

What is the oldest recorded sparkling wine, predating Dom Pérignon?

Benedictine monks near Carcassonne made it in 1531 by bottling wine before its first fermentation had finished.

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

The English liked the bubbles that French producers still considered a fault, and had the strong glass to contain them.

Dom Pérignon was a monk of which religious order?

He was cellar master at the Abbey of Hautvillers; sparkling wine did not become the region's dominant style until the mid-19th century.

The first vintage of Dom Pérignon, the prestige cuvée, was 1921. In which year was it first sold?

It sailed to New York on the SS Normandie; the brand had been given to Moët by Champagne Mercier in 1927 as a wedding present between the families.

Which is the oldest established champagne house, making champagne exclusively since 1729?

Nicolas Ruinart started giving 'wine with bubbles' to his cloth customers and gave up cloth six years later.

Moët & Chandon was founded in 1743 by whom?

The Chandon name was added in 1833 when a son-in-law joined; the house now makes about 28 million bottles a year.

Madame Clicquot is credited with inventing the riddling table, to clarify champagne, in which year?

She also made the first known vintage champagne in 1810 and the first blended rosé in 1818.

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

The house was founded in 1772 in Reims; the 'comet vintages' of 1811 made its name in Russia.

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

After riddling, the neck is frozen and the cap removed so the pressure ejects the plug of lees.

Under the appellation rules, champagne must spend at least how long developing in the bottle?

Vintage champagne, made entirely from one year's grapes, is aged much longer; most champagne is a non-vintage blend.

The dry style labelled 'Brut' was created for the British market by which house in 1876?

Perrier-Jouët had started the trend by not sweetening its 1846 vintage for London; 19th-century champagne was far sweeter.

The wire cage that keeps a champagne cork in, the muselet, was invented in 1844 by whom?

Early sparkling wine was called 'the devil's wine' because bottles exploded and corks blew out.

Which champagne house has used the James Bond films as marketing since Live and Let Die in 1973?

A Special Cuvée 007 edition marked No Time to Die; the house was founded in Aÿ in 1829.

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

He wanted a clear bottle so he could see the wine, and had reason to fear poison: he had been the target of assassination attempts.

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

Pol Roger himself started the house in 1849 in Champagne and released his first wines in 1853.

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

Its English sparkling wine, Domaine Evremond, was first released in April 2025.

Which actress was rumoured to keep a month's supply of Piper-Heidsieck in her kitchen?

The house was founded in Reims in 1785 by Florens-Louis Heidsieck.

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

Octave Gallice met the glassmaker in Paris; the house itself dates to 1811.

The Champagne riots of 1911 saw growers dump grapes and wine from which region into the Marne?

Merchants had been passing off outside grapes as Champagne after years of ruined harvests and phylloxera.

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

He and A. J. Foyt had beaten the Ferraris in a Ford GT40; a week later he won the Belgian Grand Prix in his own Eagle.

The largest standard champagne bottle, twenty bottles' worth, bears which biblical king's name?

Most houses cannot riddle anything bigger than a magnum, so giant bottles are usually filled from smaller ones.

A magnum holds how much champagne?

Magnums are thought to age better because there is less oxygen per volume of wine, though there is no hard evidence.

The champagne coupe, first made around 1663 in Greenwich, was originally called what?

The factory belonged to the Duke of Buckingham; the legend that it was modelled on Marie Antoinette is a myth.

Which town's Avenue de Champagne is lined with the leading houses, their cellars cut into the chalk below?

Moët & Chandon's headquarters there has the most-photographed statue of Dom Pérignon at its entrance.

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

The Holy Ampulla of anointing oil was said to have been brought by a dove at the baptism of Clovis in 496.

The 'Champagne Hillsides, Houses and Cellars' joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in which year?

The listing recognises the chalk cellars, the houses and the vineyards as an internationally renowned agro-industrial enterprise.

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

One story has his officers sabring bottles to impress the young widow Clicquot as they rode off from her vineyard.

What is the term for a sparkling wine of the region made only from white grapes, in practice Chardonnay?

Blanc de noirs is the reverse: white champagne made from the dark-skinned Pinots.

What was Cristal designed to be, at the tsar's request, so the wine's colour and bubbles were visible?

Standard champagne bottles were dark green; the tsar first ordered clear bottles for his 1867 Three Emperors Dinner in Paris so he could watch for poison.

The Champagne wine region lies roughly how far east of Paris?

That proximity made its wine trade rich and put its villages in the path of every army marching on the capital.

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

Emperor Domitian ordered colonial vines uprooted; Probus, a gardener's son, reversed the edict and a temple to Bacchus went up.

Which exiled French marquis promoted Champagne, and the flute glass, at Charles II's court?

He actually preferred his champagne still; it was the English who took to the sparkling version.

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

Louis Roederer inherited it from his uncle in 1833; it remains one of the few independent family-run houses.

After the 1814 'comet vintage', Veuve Clicquot's sales rose from 43,000 bottles in 1816 to how many by 1821?

Russia stayed the house's biggest customer for decades, and the 'Vin de la comète' made the name famous overnight.

In 21st-century champagne terminology, what does 'Goût anglais' or 'English taste' mean?

Historically it meant a sweetness of 22 to 66 grams of sugar per litre; the British later drove the shift to Brut.

What is the 1735 painting by Jean François de Troy that is the first known depiction of champagne in art?

Le Déjeuner d'Huîtres shows a cork flying across a room of feasting aristocrats.

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

Spain calls its version Cava and Italy uses spumante; South Africa says Cap Classique.

How many bottles does Moët & Chandon produce in a typical year?

It owns 1,190 hectares of vineyards and belongs to LVMH.

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

The six-bar pressure inside the bottle forces out the ice containing the sediment.

Roughly how many hectares of vineyard do Champagne's houses and growers manage?

There are more than a hundred houses and about 19,000 smaller vignerons.

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

It marks 'grower champagne', made by a grower from its own grapes with at most 5% bought in.

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

One explosion could set off a chain reaction, and cellars routinely lost 20 to 90 percent of their stock.

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

At the time, bubbles were considered a fault in the wine.

Which 1939 Hollywood film was reportedly approached to promote then-unpopular pink champagne?

Its main characters bond over the drink, and sales rose after the release.

The liqueur d'expedition added to set a champagne's sweetness may contain up to how much sugar?

Today dosage is used less for sweetness than to fine-tune the perception of acidity.

Caroline Latrive became cellar master in 2011 of which house, a drier-champagne pioneer?

Latrive calls dosage the final touch of champagne making, to be kept as subtle as possible.

Besides Veuve Clicquot, which house claims to have shipped the first bottles of rosé champagne?

Rosé champagne has been made since the late 18th century.