Cheers To You

Méthode Champenoise is the process of making a sparkling wine with the same method used in the cellars of Champagne, France.

It’s a secondary fermentation inside the bottle that creates those tiny bubbles we all love so much. All Champagne and most high-quality sparkling wine is made by this process.

Sparkling wine starts out as a still wine, either red or white. And then it is blended usually to produce a consistent house cuveé.

The next step is to add the dosage which is more sugar and yeast. The bottle is capped not corked and put in a riddling rack on its side neck down.

For the next two to four years, the riddler’s job is to turn each and every bottle a quarter turn four times a day. The action shakes the spent yeast cells down into the neck of the bottle.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 12th, 2013 at 7:34 am by brynn grimley and is filed under Champagne, Sparkling Wine, Weekly Wine Defined. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.