First and foremost, ‘Champagne’ wines must come solely from the Champagne region, situated an hours drive, North-East of Paris. A bottle also needs to go through a drastic list of requirement to be entitled to bear the name ‘Champagne’. Other French regions using the same methods will use the term ‘Crémant’ like in de Bourgogne, de Loir, d’Alsace. The term ‘Champagne’ has now been finally forbidden to be used by other countries, as it was very confusing for consumers.
The Champagne region is characterized by a cool climate and great soils, providing the best condition to grow high-quality grapes. Vines have been present here since the Roman times and have been recognized as outstanding throughout history. However, the proper ‘Champagne’ sparkling wines started only to appear in the late 15th Century, most likely by accident at first, before being properly developed.
Champagne refers to wines made in the region, but also using a specific technique called ‘Méthode Champenoise’, or ‘Méthode Traditionelle’ which requires a 2nd fermentation to take place in the bottle, naturally creating bubbles. Basic sparkling wines can be made by simply adding gas to wines.
As for the ‘Méthode Champenoise’, a ‘regular’ wine is produced first with an alcoholic content of about 8%. It is then transferred to the bottle, where sugar and yeast are added, provoking the second fermentation. The sugar is broken down by the yeast, creating extra alcohol, and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) – hence the bubbles!
The bottle must rest for a minimum of 15 months for the process to happen, in the cold cellars dug underground in the region – with Premium Cuvées resting for many years. During this time, the bottle must be moved and rotated to loosen the sediments created by the second fermentation. An old technique called ‘Remuage’ (Riddling) is used: The bottle neck is inserted through a wooden rack, and progressively lifted and turned daily to bring up all the sediments to the top of the neck across a period of 4 to 6 weeks. It is traditionally done by hand (a good ‘remueur’ can proceed to up to 40,000 bottles a day!), but some wineries may use machine-mounted riddlers called ‘gyropallettes’.
Then, the covering which is actually a simple metal cap is removed, either after or as it is being dipped into liquid nitrogen (to freeze the sediments). The pressure will naturally expel the sediments. At this time, the ‘liquid de dosage’ made of Reserve wines plus sugar is, added which determines the classification. We'll go further into detail in future posts.
Et voila! You have Champagne! Of course there are many more aspects and details involved in the making of Champagnes like volume of production, selection of parcels, art of blending of different vintages, ageing etc. But this is essentially what is involved in its production.
Check out Part 2 of this article series where we talk about some of the classifications and terminology used when talking about Champagnes.
No comments:
Post a Comment