Dom Pérignon (monk)

Dom Pierre Pérignon, O.S.B., (December 1638 – 14 September 1715) was a French Benedictine monk who made important contributions to the production and quality of champagne wine in an era when the region's wines were predominantly still red. Popular myths frequently, but erroneously, credit him with the invention of sparkling champagne, which didn't become the dominant style of Champagne until the mid-19th century.

The famous champagne Dom Pérignon, the prestige cuvée of Moët & Chandon, is named for him. The remains of the monastery where he spent his adult life is now the property of that winery.

Pérignon was born to a clerk of the local marshal in the town of Sainte-Menehould in the ancient Province of Champagne in the Kingdom of France. He was born in December 1638 and was baptized on 5 January 1639. He was the youngest of his parents' seven children, as his mother died the following summer. His father's family owned several vineyards in the region.

As a child Pérignon became a member of the boys' choir school operated by the Benedictine Abbey of Moiremont, studying there until 1651, when he went to study at the Jesuit college in Châlons-sur-Marne. When he was 17 he entered the Benedictine Order near the town of Verdun at the Abbey of Saint-Vanne, the leading monastery of the Congregation of St. Vanne. The congregation was a reform movement of monastic life, and he followed a regimen of prayer, study and manual labor, as prescribed in the Rule of St. Benedict. In 1668 he was transferred to the Abbaye Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers, where he served as cellarer for the rest of his life. Under his stewardship, the abbey flourished and doubled the size of its vineyard holdings, while he worked to improve their product with the help of Dom Thierry Ruinart, a noted scholar of the abbey.

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