Winemaking art

Everything you ever wanted to know about the champagne making process.

By tradition and law, the grapes are harvested by hand. In order to be as healthy as possible, the vines are being constantly monitored. Thus, throughout the year, the restraint will be necessary to develop our prestigious vintages.

From "still wine" to "sparkling wine"...

Pressing

Treat musts right out of the press in few minutes or even seconds. Then, we proceed to the chaptalisation (we add sugar).
Thus, we reach the proper degrees after the first fermentation : alcoholic fermentation

Extraction

We eliminate the fine sediments and early "rock wine".
Second fermentation: the malolactic fermentation. It is not mandatory but with this process we can remove the major part of the acid malic.
Aeration and homogenization of wines.
Switch to cold. Elimination of 95% of the fine sediments.
The rest will disappear during the filtration.
Tartaric precipitation and splicing of red wine to keep the flavor.

Blending

The goal is to create the perfect harmony in order to restore the consistent quality of our champagnes. We are going to test, analyze, and criticize in order to determine the technical and organoleptic characteristics of our champagne. The blending of our wines is chosen.

Thus, we filtrates the wine which permits to clarify it. It is the last step before the draft.

Draft

Prepare the foam taking, then, put the still wine in bottles (the more problematic step with the blending). When this process is over, the bottle neck are cut in cellar by our "mason\#.

Foam taking

Now, time for the foam taking (last fermentation): our wine is becoming Champagne! In order to make our wine effervescent, we have to provoke a last alcoholic fermentation by mixing a bottling dosage at our wine: this is the main characteristic of the traditional Champagne method. The yeast consumes the bottling dosage with carbonic gas emanation. This one comes to an end inside the wine, giving birth to the wines of Champagne.

Thereafter, the bottles are directly put inside the cellars to mature happily, between 3 to 7 years, depending on the wine.

Riddling

After the wines have aged for the required period inside the cellar, they will be gradually and delicately separate from their lees, which are made up of yeast deposits: this is the riddling process.
This operation consists in causing the lees to move down towards the neck by rotating the bottles and inclining them into a vertical position.

Disgorging

The disgorging is made on the fly, that is to say without any preparation of the wine.
We maintain the bottle in a vertical position and when the bubble of the carbonic gas arrives to the sediments we have to take off the cap. The pressure expels the cap and the sediments in the same time.

Dosage

We have to add the bottling dosage that will give birth to the different type of Champagne. (Brut de Brut : 5,5g/litre, Brut : 12g/litre…)

Labelling and Presentation

Thus the finish bottle will be washed, dried and returned to the cellar. In the final step the bottles will be labeled and packaged, ready to be dispatched all across the world !