Champagne is the wine produced from grapes grown in the northernmost vineyards of France. Even before the Champagne method of producing sparkling wine was developed more than 300 years ago, wine from that region was already among the best in France, according to Hugh Johnson’s Modern Encyclopedia of Wine. A Benedictine monk called Dom Pérignon, cellarmaster at the Abbey of Hauvillers near Reins, is credited with accidentally discovering how to make wine sparkling by a second fermentation in a tightly corked bottle. As wine professor Dr. Alexander Pandell tells it, Dom Pérignon corked and bottled some wine that was not […]