When you read about the process for creating sparkling wine, you will surely gain appreciation for the winemaker’s efforts.
Whether it is called Champagne or sparkling wine, this bubbly beverage is more difficult to produce that still wines. The process, called méthode champenoise, is time consuming and labor intensive. Some wineries take shortcuts, but the authentic méthode champenoise can be condensed into seven basic steps:
- Grape juice is fermented, just like any other wine.
- After fermentation, in a process called assemblage, the producer blends various lots of still wine together to achieve a certain style, namely the house style. This final blend is called the cuvée.
- Liqueur de tirage, a combination of yeast and cane or beet sugar, is added to the cuvée, and the wine is bottled. A second fermentation takes place in the bottle itself over the next twenty to forty-five days, producing carbon dioxide in the form of bubbles.
- When the yeast cells have completed their work, they sink into the neck of the bottle. The wine ages in the bottle in contact with the dead yeast. This is called sur lie aging.
- The bottles are rotated from a horizontal position to a vertical, upside-down, position. This allows the sediment of dead yeast cells to collect in the neck of the bottle close to the cork so that it can be removed easily and quickly. Rotating the bottles is called riddling.
- The neck of the bottle is frozen and the sediment (in the form of a frozen plug) is removed, called disgorging.
- After disgorgement, the producer adds the dosage, a combination of cane sugar and extra wine, the latter of which makes up for what was lost during disgorgement. The amount of sugar added depends on how sweet the producer wishes his product to be. In some cases, the producers leave the sugar out entirely. The bottles are recorked.