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How Champagne is made Champagne is made from three grapes, chardonnay - a white grape, pinot noir and pinot meunier – red grapes. The harvest is anytime from the end of August to early October depending on weather conditions, though cellars are open all year. To start with, Champagne is made like any wine, the grapes are pressed, the juice is stored and undergoes fermentation which changes it into wine. Next comes the blending stage to make different types of Champagne. For a non vintage champagne, wines stored from all over the region in earlier years, are added to get the taste required. After blending, liqueur de tirage, a blend of sugar and yeast that starts the second fermentation, is added, and the wine is bottled with a temporary metal cap. In the old days, a lid would be tied on with string! Scientists at Vienna University of Technology recently discovered, in testing the speed of a cork from Champagne, that a supersonic shock wave forms as the gas escapes the champagne bottle, reaching speeds of over 1.5 times the speed of sound! The carbon dioxide produced in this second fermentation remains in suspension in the wine. Sediment is also produced from the dead yeast cells. To get rid of it, the bottles are placed in racks, head down, so the sediment can drift down to the neck. Each day the bottles are given a slight twist, called riddling, to shake the sediment down. It used to be done by hand and a good riddler can turn 25,000 bottles a day, though these days it’s largely done by machine. Then the bottle neck is dipped into a brine solution to freeze it, the cap is removed and the sediment along with a bit of frozen wine is forced out by the carbon dioxide, to be replaced with a drop of wine and sugar, called a dosage. Then the bottle is sealed with a cork, and laid down to rest from one to three years on average, up to ten years for the best Champagnes. Recent studies claim that there are around 1 million bubbles in a single glass of Champagne. What’s on the label: Grand Cru and Premier Cru denotes vineyards in villages where the grapes are considered superior. Cuvée (or premier taille) – basically the first pressing of the grapes which is considered the best, specifically it refers to the first 2,050 litres of grape juice pressed from 4000kg of grapes. Deuxieme taille refers to the next 500 litres pressed. Brut, sec and doux – refers to the sugar dosage Brut is made from all three grapes, extra brut is slightly sweeter, brut nature or brut zero is a dry Champagne with a very low sugar content Sec is a semi-sweet Champagne, demi-sec has a little more sweetness, extra-sec is sweeter than Brut but still considered dry. Doux is the sweetest of the champagnes. Rosé Champagne is a blend of white and red grapes whose skins are left on longer to add colour. 36 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 37
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