Dom Perignon, the abbot of a monastery at Hautvillers, France, is often credited with inventing Champagne. It’s a nice accolade, but unfortunately Dom Perignon is not the responsible party. In fact, Dom Perignon tried like mad to keep the wines from going fizzy since the fizzy wines had the tendency to make bottles explode.

The winemakers in the Champagne region were mortified that their wines developed this fizzy quality (caused by a stopped-and-restarted fermentation in the cold climate). When they figured there was no way to avoid the problem, they turned it into a marketing blitz and made Champagne into something special.

We’ll probably never know who actually decided that a sparkling wine would be sold as something special. But we do have a lot that we owe to Dom Perignon. His legacy is rightly deserved: he is responsible for creating the blending methods using older vintages that every Champagne house uses today. This blending technique is what allows the bottle of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin that you enjoy today to taste the same as the one you had two years ago–even though the characteristics of each year’s wine change.

Dom Perignon may never have said that he was “drinking stars” (as one ad campaign put it), but we should be grateful that he spent his time working to make great wines rather than, say, writing music.

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