Champagne Palatine

In Champagne, is as early as the harvest that a special care is taken to the grape. The gathering machine is prohibited, and all good houses which respect themselves practice the handpicking: green grapes and rotted grapes are sorted.

Bunches are collected in broad and not very deep baskets, "les mannequins", in order to prevent grapes being damaged under their own weight.

To obtain white wines from black grapes, it is necessary to bring grapes to the presses as intact as possible to crush them quickly without the skins macerating into the juice: the pigments of the skins should not have time to color the juice.

Extracting the grapes juice without retaining the colored pigments contained in the skins is the objective of pressing.

Bunches are deposited whole in a traditional press. The first pressing (4000 kg of grapes) will give 2000 liters of best quality juice.

The plates are lowered and blocked by metallic stays and thus the progression of a discontinuous pressure will reduce with delicacy the plates contact with bunches.

Grapes juice collected: cut, fermented, run in various measuring tanks. Solid remains: pips, skins, ground fragments will be retained in a stainless sieve.

The practice of the must decantation (clarification) will be applied. The duration of a decantation can vary between 8 and 15 hours.

Draining valves provided with decantation elbows will play an important role by carrying a juice disencumbered of the majority of the solid matters in the cisterns transporting musts to the fermenting room

Il existe plusieurs qualités de moût :

• La cuvée, issue de 3 pressages et 2 retrousses
• Première taille : un pressage et une retrousse supplémentaire
• Deuxième taille : encore un pressage et une retrousse.

Après le pressurage, le jus de raisin est acheminé à la cuverie où il va fermenter.

La véritable élaboration commence après la première fermentation, souvent très rapide. On obtient un vin tranquille qui titre environ 11%vol, fruité et sec, doté d'une légère acidité qui retiendra la mousse.

Certains producteurs font alors faire à leurs vins une fermentation malo-lactique qui est la dégradation d'acides (essentiellement l'acide malique) en acide lactique. La fermentation malo-lactique confère au vin souplesse et rondeur.

After harvests, the vinificator selects a certain number of vintages according to the desired cuvée de triage. These vintages will bring the various nuances according to their type of vine and their geographical situation.

The assemblage will be made starting from wines of the same rawness, in order to have a very precise idea on certain aspects of quality which will lead to perfection; flavor, roundness and grace. Finally to define the marriage of the samples, the vinificator will have to present it to different wine tasters who will define the assemblage together.

After having obtained the marriage, the final assembly will be realized in large capacity tanks where a perfect mixture will be done.

The various types of vines employed that we can discover for the assemblage are:

Pinot Noir: which will give body, power but also the length in mouth

Pinot Meunier: which will supplement the whole, thanks to its sweetness and its roundness.

Chardonnay: which will provide the floral side, the freshness, the vivacity, the fineness as well as a good attack in mouth.

Put to rest in cellar until spring at approximately 10°, fermentation will lead the sweetened must to a dry wine. We will arrive thus at the first cycle of the wine making.

This will make it possible to carry out the steps of bottle packaging in order to obtain the second alcoholic fermentation; the catch of foam (a carbon dioxide formation).

These operations of champagnization demands a great vigilance because the leaven requires an excellent technology to avoid a bad catch of foam, which would oblige the vinificator to put the wine back in tank. Several weeks will be necessary to see a habituation of yeasts there.

A mixture between liquor, the circulation ferments and the moving additives will be carried out before packaging.

Once packaging finished, it is provisionally closed with a metallic cork or a capsule equipped with a polyethylene cover which will guarantee the pressure sealing and will be used as container for the yeast deposit at the end of the riddling.

After the stages of the first cycle of wine making, the quiet white wine will undergo the champagnese method that will return effervescence to the wine by a second alcoholic fermentation. Very regulated technique, the wine will remain in the bottle during delicate handling.

The bottles are put on slats, lying in the chalky cellars where a fresh and constant temperature reigns.

Under the action of yeasts, the sugar brought by the liqueur de tirage is transformed into alcohol, and especially into carbon dioxide which dissolves into the wine giving the foam. This fermentation that usually lasts from 3 to 9 months gives wine a turbid aspect because the superfluous leavens and salts settled on the walls of the bottle. Pressure of gas produced at the end of the "prise de mousse" reaches 5 to 6 atmospheres (for ordinary sparkling wines, the pressure attains only 4 atmospheres, and it does not exceed 2 atmospheres in the semi-sparkling ones).

This phase must take place slowly: cellar duration minimum one year after tirage; three years for the vintage.

The yeasts which ensured the transformation of sugar into alcohol died and formed a deposit on the walls of the bottles, which is necessary to eliminate.

L'élimination du dépot est effectuée en 2 phases :

The lost part is replaced by the “liqueur de dosage” (sometimes called “liqueur d'expédition "), mix of good champagne and excellent cane sugar. The quantity of sugar thus introduced determines if the wine will be raw, dry, medium dry...

• Extra brut: less than 6 grams of sugar per liter
• Brut: less than 15 grams
• Extra dry: from 12 to 22
• Dry: from 17 to 35 grams
• Medium dry: from 33 to 50 grams
• Doux (soft): up to 100 grams of sugar per liter!

Proceeding to final sealing and labeling.

The label comprises:

• The Champagne mention, which guarantees on one hand its origin, on the other hand the compliance with the very strict rules of production;
• The brand;
• The name of the supplier;
• The approximate dosage;
• The year (if not its absence...);
• Seldom, the grape’s village of origin;
• Rarement, la commune d'origine des raisins;
• The professional statute of the supplier, in the shape of two esoteric letters whose significance is as follows:
  
• NM : Négociant-Manipulant: sells the wine made from bought grape
  Il vend le vin qu'il a élaboré à partir de raisin acheté.
• CM : Coopérative-Manipulant
• RM : Récoltant-Manipulant:
  sells himself the wine made by him, from his own vines.
• MA : Marque d'acheteur (Purchaser’s Brand):
  The purchase “sur lattes” is legal: it’s an already made wine, resold under the name and at the price of the purchaser. In general, it’s a wine which the trader does not wish to market it himself.
• Récoltant-Coopérateur:
  sells under his label the wine made by the co-operative.