Anyone who knows me knows that I have a thirst for knowledge, but not just knowledge that kind of stuff that you would only need to know if you were ever going to be on a quiz game show. In fact that is where this piece of information that I am about to tell you comes from.

In the UK there is a television game show hosted by Stephen Fry (Blackadder, V for Vendetta) called QI. This isn’t just a quiz show however, it is a show in which the information is never what you would expect, making it perfect for those “did you know” moments at your next party.Take for example the following. This is quoted verbatim from the QI book which Stephen Fry has written called “The Book of General Ignorance” which I highly suggest everyone pick up:

“Who invented Champagne?

Not the French.

It may come as a surprise – even an outrage – to them but champagne is an English invention.

Anyone who has made their own ginger beer knows, fermentation naturally produces bubbles. The problem has always been controlling it.

The English developed a taste for fizzy wine in the sixteenth century, importing barrels of green, flat wine from Champagne and adding sugar and molasses to start it fermenting. They also developed the strong coal-fired glass bottles and corks to contain it.

As the records of the Royal Society show, what is now called methode champenoise was first written about down in England in 1662. The French added finesse and marketing flair but it wasn’t until 1876 that they perfected the modern dry or brut style (and even then it was for export to England).

The UK is France’s largest consumer for champagne. In 2004, 34 million bottles were consumed in Britain. This is almost a third of the entire export market – twice as much as the USA, three times as much as the Germans and twenty times as much as the Spanish.

The Benedictine monk Dom Perignon (1638-1715) did not invent champagne: in fact he spent most of his time trying to remove the bubbles.

His famous exclamation: ‘Come quickly, I am drinking the stars’, was devised for an advertisement in the late nineteenth century. Perignon’s real legacy to champagne was in the skilful blending of grape varieties from different vineyards and the use of a wire or hempen cage for the cork.”