The History of Champagne : Dom Pérignon

Pierre Pérignon joined the abbey in 1668, at the age of 30, and remained there until his death in 1715. Like other winemakers in the region, he initially produced a still wine, where the presence of bubbles simply indicated that fermentation had not been completed, and that the CO had not been completely eliminated via the broquelet (a primitive wooden cork, greased and tied with hemp). Bubbles were a defect to be corrected, if only because they presented a real danger: they risked shattering the relatively fragile glass of the bottles of the time. Until the Champenois adopted the cork stopper, an ancient Roman invention, it was best to avoid sparkling wines.

At Hautvillers, Pérignon doubled the size of the terroir to 20 hectares, favoring Pinot Noir over other varieties grown in the region. He was convinced that this noble grape variety, which produced the great reds of Burgundy, was less volatile than the white varieties, and therefore less likely to continue fermenting, whether in barrel or bottle.
He insists on cutting the vines back to less than 1 meter in height, and harvesting with care so that the berries remain whole. Likewise, he recommends replacing overly spirited horses with mules or donkeys to avoid shaking the bunches during transport

Lastly, as he is aiming for a white wine, and knowing that it is the skin of the grapes that gives the wine its color, he insists on pressing as soon as possible to limit this contact. When the color begins to darken (during the fourth or fifth pressing), he recommends rejecting the "second" juices. As his successors noted, Pérignon was a perfectionist.