Within a couple of hours of being picked whole grapes are poured into a modern press. The air chamber within this cylinder is inflated and the grapes are slowly pressed.
The pressing produces ‘must’ which over a period of 24 hours naturally decants and clarifies: (operation called “must settling”). The alcoholic (grapes’ sugar is naturally transformed into alcohol) and malolactic fermentations take place in tanks. At each step, we move the wine from one tank to another, in order to air it and to clarify it (known as “racking”).
In Springtime clear wines from the previous harvest are ready. Why wines? We have to reveal our secret: we separately turn to wine the grapes from each of our parcels of land; one tank for each. And, believe us, wines are bruised by the slope and the subsoil of our different “climes”. It is also time to check on how wines from older vintages and promising “reserve wines” are doing. Samples from the different wines and vintages are used for the “blending ceremony”: our experienced tasters and champagne makers decide the composition of the next cuvées.
Once the blending composition is decided we start to make the wine on a large scale. Then, we set up the bottling chain: wines are bottled and then natural yeasts and their food (sugar) are added. The bottles are temporarily closed and are piled on traditional laths. There “on lath” the yeasts eat the sugars (like you and I love to do!) and produce carbonic gas (the bubbles): this is known as “bottle fermentation”.
Then we store the bottles in a “silence kingdom”, our cellar, for a long time. They are held in the dark and at constant temperature. Champagne acquires all its aromas in 3, 4, 6, 8…years!
We will later wake up those sleeping beauties. The deposit, made of yeasts, has to be removed! But how? First of all, we make it slide to the neck by riddling. On traditional sloping racks or with modern “gyropallet”, the movement is unchanged: a slow rotation with a slow straightening up, that aims at having a bottle “on tip”. The next step is disgorgement. After freezing the deposit (thank you, progress!), each bottle is quickly re-opened and the deposit is expulsed.
We take advantage of this moment to add a little touch of sweet liqueur, very small for our Brut Tradition, a little bit more for the “Demi sec”. Then we hurry to permanently close the bottles with cork and put the wire cap to prevent any leak of champagne and gas.
After a careful labelling, the bottles are ready to be sent to our clients.