Winemaking in Champagne is an incredibly intricate and protected process, with the title of method Champenoise being exclusive to the region. What many may not realise though, is making Champagne starts out the same as still white winemaking. Like all winemaking, Champagne starts out with harvesting.
when the grapes have reached their optimal ripeness and balance between sugar and acidity levels. In Champagne, all producers must harvest their grapes by hand and will use small buckets so the grapes aren't crushed before being pressed. The harvested bunches will then go through a rigorous sorting process to make sure that only the best berries are sent for production. All the grapes are picked by hand, no machine.
So by hand you can make selection, you take only the good parts, this one is a machine, take everything. A machine will take bird nests, rotten grapes, snakes, snails, everything. By hand-picking you can check the good ones. Once the grapes have been sorted, they will be ready for pressing.
Grapes will be placed as whole bunches into a press, which in Champagne is traditionally a coca or basket press, though many producers now use a pneumatic press. Pressing is important, it's a part of the Champagne method. That's why we don't like others saying they make method Champenoise. We prefer the traditional method. But the way we extract grapes is important.
We don't crush, we press. We want to make white wine out of black grapes. By pressing, you know, you have automatic press. In a way, it's vertical, like any press. You can do it mechanically, pneumatically, hydraulic.
So now most of the press are automatic, so you control your pressure. But you have also the manual one, the traditional one. But you know when you squeeze a fruit there is a moment when nothing is flowing, so you have to shake the fruit, press another time.
So on the traditional one you level the press, you have people with forks turning the grapes, pressing another time. On automatic one it's like if you make concrete. You turn, you press. Which one is the best? It's like driving a car.
You have an automatic gearbox and manual gearbox. When it's on motorway, automatic or manual, you drive. On snow it's different. So on snow, if you're a good driver and a manual gearbox, you can be very efficient. But if you're a bad driver and a manual gearbox on snow, you can go out of the track.
This pressing process is strictly protected under Champagne's appellation laws. with producers only allowed to extract 2,550 liters of juice from every 4,000 kilograms of grapes. The extracted juice is divided into the vin de cuvee, which is the first 2,050 liters pressed, and the vin de taille, which is the remaining 500 liters. The vin de cuvee is the premium juice and is reserved for a champagne house's best wines. The juice will then be transferred to stainless steel vats.
or in some cases small oak barrels. This unfermented grape juice, known as must, will settle with any sediment resting at the bottom. Once settled, the sediment is removed during what is known as debaubage. While stored, the wine will then undergo alcoholic fermentation.
This occurs either naturally or through the addition of selected yeasts to the vat. Alcoholic fermentation is the process of yeast consuming the grape's natural sugars, which creates the natural by-products of ethanol or alcohol, carbon dioxide and heat. Some producers may then allow malolactic fermentation to occur during which microorganisms naturally found in grape juice transform tart malic acid found in green apples into soft lactic acid which is found in milk. This process softens the wine and helps to give a round and creamy texture. Many producers in Champagne prefer to prevent the malolactic fermentation from occurring as a stylistic decision to maintain fresh and crisp acidity in their wines.
This can be controlled by adding sulfur dioxide or keeping the wine at a low temperature where this fermentation cannot take place. Champagne is a wine that is made from the Champagne region. Champagne, it's a region.
It's like Burgundy, it's like Kent, it's like Dorset. And Champagne wine can only be made with grapes coming from that region. It's a small proportion of global sparkling wine today.
Champagne is a sparkling wine. It's a wine, in the case of the Champagne method, fermented twice. The first fermentation is like any kind of wine in the world, let's say any kind of white wine.
It's undergone in barrels or in tank, and basically grape juice becomes wine under the influence of the addition of some yeasts. Juice basically, grape juice becomes wine, still wine. That's it. After alcoholic fermentation, the chef de cave or master blender of a champagne house will undergo the critical blending process called assemblage. Wines of different grape varieties, villages and vineyards will all be blended together to create the desired wine, with non-vintage wines also having a variety of different vintages.
So Olivier, what do you do with all this wine after a year? In January of next year, we will taste every single vat. Individually, for choosing if we keep this wine for one more year of storage or we use it for the blend of the next bottling period. So every day we taste the...
fat, we keep notes and we start making our blending, the recipe of the cuvee. We have different type of way to doing. This wine we only go on non-vintage wine so maybe we use a part of this vat, no wine or full of the vat. It depends on the effect of this wine in the future blend. So maybe in spring we put this wine in the big blend of of good classic or we can keep it one more year in storage.
Once blending is complete, the still wine will be bottled and a mixture of sugar and yeast, called the liqueur de tirage, will be added to each bottle to induce a secondary alcoholic fermentation in the bottle. Bottles are then sealed with a crown cap, similar to that found on beer bottles and are normally stored in a cellar or the traditional chalk tunnels of champagne. The The added yeast in the wine will consume the sugar, creating alcohol and carbon dioxide in the wine. As the wine is sealed, the carbon dioxide is unable to escape and dissolves into the wine, causing it to become fizzy.
Once all of the sugar is consumed, the dead yeast will settle in the wine as what is known as the lees. Over time, these lees will impart bready and toasty characteristics to the champagne in a process called autolysis. Most fine champagnes will spend at least two years on their lids, with some vintage champagnes spending up to five or six years. Diego, here on the left and on the right we have wines which are aging. So these bottles are undergoing the second fermentation.
And they are basically, as you can see, they're stagged on pieces of wood which we call lats. That enables the bottles to be stable and not be shaken around. So these wines are basically aging and they will be in their cellars for another 3, 4, 5 years. All of them are in the same stages of second fermentation. Exactly, exactly.
What we call aging. I mean the second fermentation might be just finished, so the carbonic gas is inside, but the aging and the maturing and the division of the leaves, the yeast in smaller pieces, in order to generate a finer champagne and smaller bubbles. After at least 15 months, The champagne will be slowly rotated upside down during the riddling process so that all of the dead yeast cells accumulate in the neck of the bottle.
I don't want to get too technical, but basically, obviously, for example, when we talk about the remuage, the riddling of the bottle, that used to be done exclusively by hands. So basically turning the bottle from a horizontal to a vertical position to evacuate the yeasts. And now, essentially, it's done by machine.
So basically, you put the bottles in a pallet, metal pallet, and the metal pallet is put on a metal fork. And the fork turns like one quarter or one eighth every day, and then again for about 10 to 12 days, and then eventually the fork puts the pallet in a horizontal position. The bottlenecks will be frozen and the bottle cap will be removed.
The pressure from the carbon dioxide will eject the remaining yeast cells. This is called disgorgement and was also traditionally done by hand, however it is usually now done by a machine. Finally, sugar may be added to the champagne, which is known as the dosage, balancing the wine's acidity. The cork is then added to the bottle and the champagne will be left to settle for a few months before being ready for sale.
This process has been tweaked and perfected over hundreds of years, however the essence of the method Champenoise is still the same. So how has the process changed over the years? I would say that fundamentally the recipe of what makes champagne become champagne has not changed. Once again, It's a wine fermented twice, and the second time is done in a bottle.