When wine goes through a second fermentation, it develops bubbles; the sparkling wine that is made from pinot noir grapes grown in France's Champagne region is called... champagne. The 17-century Benedictine monk, Dom Pierre Pérignon, developed a way to blend the wine, choosing to store it in bottles, rather than casks. This created more bubbles and there was a constant danger of bursting bottles, so Dom Pérignon used a cork which was secured to the bottle with a wire thread. Lawrence Welk, born on this date in 1903, was a band leader and accordionist. The music he favored was so light and bubbly it was compared to champagne and the tag "champagne music" stuck. While Welk's band played big-band era pop songs and polkas, bubbles floated gently over the singers and dancers on stage.
