It’s likely the first sparkling wines were a happy accident – partially fermented wines which were bottled in winter and bubbled into life in the spring. The warmth of spring unexpectedly woke dormant yeasts which converted unfermented sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. From there, trapped in a bottle, the gas either dissolved in the wine or caused quite the explosion. Legend has it that, in the spring of 1531, a monk of the Abbey of St Hillaire, near Carcassonne, mastered this process.
