People ask me all the time what my favorite wine is, and many don’t like my answer as we don’t make that many cases of the wine I could drink every day: Sparkling wine! Our 2023 Sparkling Brut Rose just won Best of Class in the “Rose Sparkling “ category at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, so I thought I would discuss how sparkling wine is made via Methode Champenoise! This type of wine is also fresh on my mind as one of our harvest interns came from the Champagne region of France and his family makes great Champagne (and they would be happy to have visitors if you are going there)! What is méthode champenoise you ask? Simply put it is the method of making sparkling wine as is done in the Champagne region of France, and it is very labor intensive and can be a long process from start to finish.

We start with picking the grapes at about 19 to 20 Brix (approximate % sugar), which is about 4 to 5 Brix lower than the sugar levels of regular wine grapes when picked. The reason why is to keep the alcohol lower in the final product and also during the middle stages of the winemaking, which I will discuss later. If the final alcohol is high then you would really notice it in the glass. Once picked the grapes are naturally high in acid level, then pressing the grapes lightly helps keep that acidity and the acidity levels stay consistent throughout the process and into the final product, which is a feature of most sparkling wines. After the grapes are pressed, the juice is then fermented in a vessel, likely in a stainless tank with temperature control. Fermenting the juice at a cold temperature helps keep the fruity flavors from evaporating during the fermentation. The wines are fermented to dryness (i.e., there is no remaining sugar), and then they are then filtered and ready for the next important step, which is “tirage”.

Tirage is the process of putting the carbonation into the wine naturally using yeast and sugar. When any wine is fermented, the yeast converts the sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide, and some smart person figured out how much sugar is needed per 750 milliliters (a bottle) to produce the perfect pressure in the bottle. That magic number is 24 grams of sugar per liter of wine! So, for tirage, the wine that has already been made and filtered is put into a tank and then the sugar is added along with yeast. Normally you let this mixture of wine, sugar and yeast sit overnight to allow the yeast to start growing. Then, as quickly as you can, you put the mixture into bottles and put a crown cap on tightly. You will notice that the bottles for sparkling wine are thicker and heavier than normal wine bottles. These thicker bottles are required to handle the pressure that will build up inside the glass.

Next is the waiting game… the bottles are loaded on their sides into bins and moved to a location warm enough to let the yeast ferment comfortably at a temperature around 60°F - any colder and the yeast may struggle. After a few weeks, the yeast will have fermented and most of the sugar and the pressure inside the bottle will be near maximum, which is about 5 bar or 72PSI (which is a lot of pressure!). Generally the wine sits in the bottle for about a year, and the longer in bottle, the more yeasty flavors develop. We want more fruity flavors in this sparkling wine, so we decided to remove the yeast after about 9 months, which involves the next step, “riddling.”

Over the 9 month aging, the yeast settles on the sides of the bottles and the bottles are shaken to “unstick” the yeast from the glass. To riddle the bottles we could do so in one of two ways. If we were old school, we would store the bottles horizontally on wooden boards with holes on the sides, then the bottles would be turned daily by hand, about a sixteenth of a turn, with a slight upward tilt each time. Over a two week period due to this rotation and tilting, the yeast which has been spread out horizontally in the bottle moves and is now concentrated in the neck of the bottle, leaving the wine crystal clear. Since we are not old school, instead we use a riddling machine that is programmed with a computer to do the same motions mechanically. With this method, the riddling takes only one week for the wine to reach clarity, saving time and also space, because we can riddle 504 bottles of wine in the same amount of space in lieu of using a traditional riddling rack that can only hold 60 bottles!

After riddling comes “disgorging.” First the yeast is removed by freezing the neck of the bottle. Just above the yeast that is now in the neck of the bottle, an ice plug forms by placing the bottle neck in a saltwater or glycol bath at a really cold temperature. The bottle is then held upright, a bottle opener takes off the cap and the plug pushes the yeast out leaving a clean, clear wine. A small dose of liquid sugar is added (if wanted) to balance off the high acidity in the wine. Next, the bottle is topped off with some of the same wine to reach the correct fill height (i.e., if too much wine was lost at opening). Finally, a cork goes in, then a wire cage is put on, a wine label is applied, and…we are done!

As you can see a lot of labor and time goes into making a méthode champenoise sparkling wine but the reward is fantastic! I am sure you will enjoy drinking the Roche 2023 Reserve Brut Rosé as much as I am!