How Champagne is Made
The unique orchestrated taste of champagne comes from te three types of grapes put in it, chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier. Each of these lends its flavor in a distinctive way to produce the blend we call and hail as champagne.
Creating The Base Wine (Cuvée)
The grapes are carefully pressed to release the juice before the blending, the grapes are pressed, but the skins or color or other bitter qualities are not allowed to mix with the juice.
The juice is then fermented individually, and then kept aside either for blending or for aging depending on the wine to be made.
The first fermentation being over, the winemakers will then mix or blend the juice from three different grape varieties to make the base wine or cuvee. The winemaker may according to his skill and the type of champagne he wants to produce may mix aged samples as well as samples from different vineyards. In some case samples are up to the count of a hundred of the three types of grapes.
The Second Fermentation
Charmat is the technique now mostly used for the second fermentation, it is effective as it reduces the time and the expense needed to produce the wine. It is also often referred to as the tank method.
The other method or the traditional method is used only in case of making true blue blooded champagne, it has to make sure that the champagne is allowed to ferment in small bottles instead of a huge tank. It is time consuming and extremely laborious.
The bubbles are produced in the wine after the second fermentation. The blending of the grapes also requires the various wines to have more yeast and sugar, and that makes sure that the bubbles are formed, these bubbles unlike the cola fizz are not aggressive and short lived, but tingle the tongue and are soft.
Filed under: Beginners Guide
