Champagne Part II

“TRUE FACTS” Here is part II, the end game of how Champagne becomes so wonderful. How DO they get all that yeast out of there? And what does BRUT actually mean?

When we left our nascent Champagne bottles they had been dosed with yeast, topped by a crown cap and were resting on their sides. Your “basic” non-vintage Champagnes will be aged like this for a minimum of 18 months. Your finer vintage Champagnes will develop like this for at least 3 years (often more) and your very best might lay down for up to 10 years. At this point all of the yeasty lees are coating the bottom inside of the bottle like a fine powder. The challenge now is to get all of this sediment into the neck of the bottle for removal. For the finest of Champagnes this process involves 100 or more hand steps. The bottles are taken from the stacks and each is placed neck first into angled holes bored into specially built wooden A-frames called “pupitres”. In the process known as “riddling” every 3 or 4 days, a trained workman (called a remuer in French) gives the bottles a shake and a slight turn, gradually increasing the angle of tilt and dropping the bottle back in the rack with a slight whack. After an entire  6 or 8 weeks, all the bottles end up positioned straight downward and all the sediment has collected in the neck.   To remove the yeast lees the neck of the bottle is placed in an icy brine or glycol solution, which causes the neck's contents (mainly the sediment) to freeze into a solid plug. What happens next is called “disgorging” the cork (or cap) is removed, and the pressure in the bottle causes the frozen plug of sediment to pop out. The French term for this process is dégorgement for disgorging. The disgorging procedure is followed by the remaining steps involved with this “méthode champenoise”, including adding the “dosage”, the topping off of the bottle with additional wine, putting in the actual cork it and cinching it down with a wire cage. The dosage is what will determine the degree of sweetness in the final wine. This shipping dosage (dosage d'expédition or liqueur d'expédition) is a syrupy mixture of sugar and wine (and sometimes brandy and/or citric acid) that is added to Champagne immediately prior to final corking to increase its level of sweetness. Depending on this level of sweetness, sparkling wines are described as Extra Brut, Brut, Extra Dry or Extra-Sec, Sec, Demi-Sec, or Doux. Serve your sparkling wines chilled - but not too cold (about 45-50° F). Serving Champagne too cold dumbs down much of the flavor and makes the wine seem too tart. Sparkling wines are perhaps the most versatile wines to pair with almost any food. Try with salty foods, cheeses, poultry, fish, even pork and veal. However, unless the sparkling wine is quite sweet (Demi-Sec or Doux) it may be overwhelmed by sweets or dessert. Champagne flutes are ok for good sparkling wines but to truly enjoy the really good stuff try drinking from a traditional wine glass like a Bordeaux or Pinot Noir glass. No need to swirl the glass since the bubbles will carry the aromas to your nose.