the invention of sparkling wine

We know that the invention of wine occurred somewhere in what is now Georgia (the Eastern European country not the home of Coca-cola) and in Mesopotamia (around the actual territories of Iran and Iraq) around 2000 BC. Sparkling wine is far more recent. The first human looking to make wine or beer didn’t know anything about the science and technologies behind bubbles and carbon dioxide. For a long time beer and wine were still beverages. With luck, some of our predecessors may have discovered some fizzy spring water, but most of them had to settle for a liquid without bubbles.

As people of the 21st century, we take sparkling wine and bubbles for granted. Today, we take for granted access to thousands of different Champagnes, Sekt, Prosecco, Crémant, and other Pet Nats. What human genius and creativity was needed to come to this point?

To have a sparkling wine, you need a gas, and something to retain the pressure until you drink the wine. Most sparkling beverages are made with CO2 dissolved under pressure in the liquid. The pressure in sparkling wine is generally above 3 bar (35 PSI) to 5 bar (only in Champagne, 72 PSI). But how to create gas and pressure in the wine? Until the industrial revolution, no one knew. But sparkling wine where present a long time before the end of the 19th century.

During the Middle Ages, it was noted, in Italy and France, some wines have become spontaneous sparkling. The phenomena only occurred for wine in sealed bottles. In the XVI, the phenomenon was documented but monks of the Saint Hilaire Abbay in the actual Aude department in Occitanie (France). The wine made with Mauzac (named blanquette) was already famous in the Limoux era. The wine was sold in flasks and not barrels as it was more luxurious. For some years, without knowing why, flasks exploded, and some did not. In those intact bottles, the wine was sparkling (and sometimes not).

What happened is not fully known. We can make the hypothesis that cold weather has stopped the fermentation, and the wine was poured into flasks for aging before the yeast consumed all the sugar. With the rising temperatures, sleeping yeasts wake up and transformed the residual sugar into alcohol. The process release CO2, now trapped in the flask. If the pressure was too high, the flask blasted, if not: sparkling wine was created.

Monks empirically enhanced the process and improved the production, leading to what we know today as the “Méthode Ancestrale” and Blanquette de Limoux. Their knowledge and experience were used in other areas, in Die (Clairette de Die), in Gaillac, and also in the Champagne region.

In Champagne, sparkling wine was originally named “devil’s wine” because bottles often exploded, and people were not fond of bubbles in the wine. Winemakers would make everything to avoid it. But some English people love it. They love it so much that they had the idea to buy barrels of wine from Champagne and put it in the bottle with some sugar to try to make sparkling wine.

At the same time, a monk named Pierre Perrignon at the Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers started improving the process of wines from Champagne. He started to blend several varieties from different locations. He was supposed to introduce the cork held on the bottle by a string of hemp impregnated with oil. He also tries to introduce stronger bottles to avoid explosions.

In the late 17th century, bottle production was an artisanal process, using wood as a source of heat, which was essential for making thicker bottles. At the beginning of the 18th century, English glassmakers switched from wood to coal. It enabled them to produce stronger bottles needed for sparkling wine in Champagne, Limoux, or elsewhere.

However, having stronger bottles was not the only challenge in the world of sparkling wine. At this time, nobody knew the existence of yeast and the biochemistry behind alcohol production. Winemakers operate empirically without the proper tooling. The production of Champagne was about 300000 bottles a year and not all of them were sparkling.

In 1866, the French scientist, Louis Pasteur, published his work on wine, “Etudes sur le vin”. He simply summarizes his work on yeasts and alcohol production in wine and the role of some bacteria in common wine flaws.

This was a revolution; winemakers could have a better and safer approach to making wine.

The production of gas by the yeast was fully understood. Winemakers knew how to securely produce sparkling wine. By using a non-fermented or partially fermented must like in the Method Ancestrale or Methode rurale, or by adding yeast and sugar to a fermented must like in the Methode Traditionnelle. They have the knowledge and the tools to measure and detect the perfect moment to seal the bottle or add yeast and sugar. In 1895, Frederico Martinotti, created a new method to produce sparkling wine. Instead of using the bottle to create and pressure the gas, he used a clothed tank. In hermetic tanks, wine is added with yeast and sugar. Wine is kept in the tank for less than 10 days and then bottled immediately. The process was improved and patented by Eugène Charmat in 1907. This method is used for Moscato d’Asti, Lambrusco, Sekt, and Prosecco. It permits large production, with no need to manage thousands of bottles, but it misses the aging on lees that give other sparkling wine their taste.

Finally, in the middle of the 20th another method was introduced. Using CO2 injection. The worst method ever, it gives big bubbles and it is only used for low-quality wines just better than a grape Fanta. While sparkling wine has been known since the end of the Middle Ages, and possibly earlier, the production methods we enjoy today are more recent. The rules, techniques, and processes were mainly developed during the 19th century when advancements in science and industry provided the knowledge to understand fermentation, tools to manage it, and bottles strong and affordable enough to produce wine. But it comes with a part of traditions that were forged during the past when making sparkling wine was an adventure and occasionally an accident.