Broadly speaking, there are six main ways of making sparkling wine. In this piece I will be taking a look at the traditional method; but first, a quick glance at the others:
Ancestor Method: How the first sparkling wines were made, mostly by accident, but has seen a resurgence lately (albeit in a significantly more modern way) for the production of pét-nat (pétillant naturel) wines.
Carbonation: The cheapest of all methods, carbon dioxide is pumped through a still wine and bottled under pressure – just like a soda stream! Chapel Down’s Sparkling Bacchus I recently tasted on my Instagram is made this way.
Asti Method: Used for making the sweet, (relatively) low alcohol sparkling wine Asti – bet you couldn’t have worked that one out! Asti hails from Piemonte, in north-west Italy, but this method is occasionally used elsewhere.
Tank Method: Also known as the charmat method or cuve close, this is responsible for the majority of the worlds sparkling wine. To name but a few, it’s used for the production of nearly all Prosecco, Sekt from Germany and Australian sparkling Shiraz as well as high volume inexpensive sparkling wines from all of the world. Generally, it is often seen as inferior to the traditional method but with high quality grapes and appropriate care during production it can make some fantastic, high-quality wines.
Transfer Method: combines the benefits of lees ageing in bottle from the traditional method but avoids the costs and difficulties of riddling and disgorging like the tank method. Often perceived to sit above the everyday plonk made by carbonation or the tank method, but not quite at the premium of traditional method. This method is seen mostly in the New World. ‘Transfer method’ will rarely appear on the bottle, with ‘bottle-fermented’ the preferred term.
The Traditional Method
This is the most expensive and time-consuming method for making sparkling wine. As a result, the traditional method is usually reserved for premium wines. The heavyweight is undoubtedly Champagne, but it is also used for making South African Cap Classique, English and Welsh quality sparkling wine, crémant (such as Crémant de Loire, Crémant d’Alsace or Crémant de Bourgogne), other Loire Valley sparklers like Saumur and Vouvray, Franciacorta and Cava. The best fizz from the New World is made this way and, very occasionally, the best Sekt or Prosecco uses the traditional method too.
Grape Varieties
Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the two main grape varieties used in the traditional method, the world over. Most places allow the use of regional varieties alongside these two grapes. For example, Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc in the Loire for Crémant de Loire or Macabeo, Xarel-lo, Parellada, Garnacha and Monastrell for Cava. While traditional method wines are all made in the same way, this variation in grape varieties (as well as terroir) means that they are all different stylistically.
The Process
The traditional method uses a secondary fermentation in bottle to make a still base wine into a sparkling wine.
Base Wines
The base wines are made in the same way as still wines. Yeast is added to freshly pressed grape juice in a fermentation vessel, starting fermentation as it ‘eats’ the natural sugars. The two by-products of fermentation are carbon dioxide and alcohol. The CO₂ is released and the base wines are allowed to reach about 10.5-11.5% alcohol – less than usual for a still wine.
Blending
The blending of base wines has always been a very important part of making these wines. This is done for a number of reasons including to make a particular house style, to improve the balance of a wine or to enhance the complexity of a wine. A winemaker may have more than 100 different base wines to blend from to make his desired wines. As well as base wines from that vintage, a winemaker can add reserve wines to the blend at this stage as well. All or some of these base wines may have undergone a variety of winemaking techniques including malolactic fermentation, lees ageing and stirring or spent time in oak.
Secondary Fermentation
Once the winemaker has the blend ready, the liqueur de tirage is added. This is mostly comprised of sugar and yeast. The wine is then bottle straightaway, so that each bottle contains a small amount of sugar and yeast. The bottles are sealed with a crown cap (i.e. a beer cap) and stacked horizontally in a constantly cool place. The secondary fermentation starts inside the bottle as the added yeast consumes the added sugar. As the bottle is sealed with a crown cap, the CO₂ produced can’t escape and goes into solution creating the fizz. This increases the pressure in the bottle to around 6 atmospheres or 90psi. The remaining 1-1.5% alcohol that is required to bring the wine to about 12% ABV is created now as well.
Yeast Autolysis
After the secondary fermentation, the yeast runs out of food and dies, forming a viscous sand-like sediment called lees. Slowly the lees breaks down in contact with the wine through a process called autolysis. This starts giving the wine autolytic flavours. Funnily enough, these are yeasty flavours – things like fresh bread, brioche, pastry, biscuit or toast. Lees ageing also adds texture to the mouthfeel of a wine. These added flavours and texture are what makes traditional method wines so special. The longer a wine is aged on its lees, the more these savoury flavours will develop. Legally, most traditional method sparkling wines have to be aged for at least 9 months on lees in bottle, but most will try for at least 12 months and ideally 18 months even for the most basic of non-vintage wines, to make sure that a good amount of this savoury character has developed. Some top end wines can be aged for up to 10 years on lees. There are a handful of very special wines that are aged for longer but these are very, very rare. Keeping the wine on lees also helps to maintain its freshness.
The sandy lees sediment in a bottle.
Riddling
After a period of maturation, the lees needs to be removed. The first step is to get the lees sitting on the underside of the crown cap. The process of doing this is called riddling. This involves very slowly moving the bottle from horizontal to an inverted vertical position. The bottle is alternately twisted a quarter turn each way as it raised, so that the lees is gently seesawed onto the crown cap. Traditionally this was done by hand on a special A-frame board called a pupitre. This was a very labour-intensive process and would take up to 8 weeks, turning the bottles a couple of times a day. The very best remueur (professional riddler) where very skilled (and well paid), going as quickly as two bottles every second (one with each hand). A few producers still do this, but often only for the best wines in their range.
This process was invented in the early 1800’s by a young woman named Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin; one of her achievements that makes her one of the most influential people in the history of traditional method sparkling wine. These days she is better known as Madame Veuve Clicquot, the daughter of the founder of Veuve Clicquot. In the 100 years or so up until this point that Champagne had been making sparkling wines, they had always been cloudy, with the sediment in the bottle.
These days, riddling is nearly always mechanised. The standard machine is a gyropalette that can hold 500 bottles in a cage. A hydraulic arm then lifts and twists the cage. What takes 8 weeks with hand riddling, can be done in only 6 days with a gyropalette.
On the left is a pupitre used for hand riddling, with the bottles in a varying stages of riddling. On the right is a picture of the gyropalettes that have replaced the pupitre in most of the world.
Disgorging
Getting the lees to crown cap is only half the problem. The other half is getting the lees out. This process is called disgorging or dégorgement in French. Today, this is also done mechanically. The bottle is removed from the gyropalette and the neck of the bottle is dipped into a cold brine solution (roughly -26°C). This part-freezes the lees in a small icecap of wine, allowing the bottle to be turned upright without risk of the lees falling away from the cap. The bottle is then placed on a disgorging line where the cap is removed and the pressure inside the bottle forces the ice, with the sediment inside, out of the bottle.
A few producers use corks rather than crown caps for sealing the bottles during the secondary fermentation. This means they have to disgorge in the traditional way: by hand (dégorgement à la volée). This is often done without the lees being part-frozen in the neck beforehand. Just like hand riddling, this requires a great deal of technical skill as it’s easy to leave sediment in the bottle or lose half a bottle of wine. If you stick dégorgement à la volée into YouTube there are videos of this being demonstrated.
Next, the wine is topped up be the liqueur d’expédition. The exact make-up of the liqueur d’expédition is a closely guarded secret, unique to each producer. Generally, it will consist of wine to replace what was lost during disgorging and a dosage of sugar that will determine the final sweetness of the wine. It’s worth noting that the dosage is about the harmony of a wine rather than quantifiable sweetness. This is the final way of bringing a wine perfectly into balance. For example, a brut wine from a warmer site or warmer year may have a dosage of 8g/L to balance the wine. However, a brut wine from a cooler site or year may have a dosage of 10g/L. This extra amount of sugar will help to bring out the fruit character in a wine made from less ripe grapes due to the cooler climate or weather. Warmer sites have riper and, therefore, more fruit flavours in the grapes. These wines would need less sugar to be balanced.
Finally, the cork is forced in mechanically. To make an airtight seal and to withstand a pressure of about 70psi or 5 atmospheres, the sparkling wine cork is a cylinder with a round face area about three times that of the opening of the bottle. A wire cage is then added for security. Incidentally, it is an industry standard that the cage is always tied with 6 half twists, no matter where in the world the wine comes from. The bottle is then cleaned and labelled and voila! It’s ready for sale and consumption.
Climate
One of the key elements to making good traditional method sparkling wines is to use grapes with high acidity. This contributes towards their trademark freshness and assists in ensuring the wines are balanced after time aging, on lees or on cork. Consequently, it is often the cooler parts of the winemaking world where we find the best wines; think Champagne and the UK. To make these wines in warm climates involves taking fruit from cooler vineyards. This could be by using vineyards at a higher altitude or vineyards in coastal valleys that get a lot of fog, like the Adelaide Hills and Tasmania in Australia or Anderson Valley and Los Carneros in America.
Sweetness Levels
These are the official EU sweetness levels that are used for any sparkling wine. Note that there is overlap, so wines may be eligible for multiple categories. Sweetness in wine is measured in grams of residual sugar per litre (g/L). There is a general trend towards drier styles of sparkling wine these days. A lot of the confusion around sweetness levels comes from the use of both French and English terms.
Brut Nature or Zero Brut: 0-3g/L of residual sugar. Must be bottled with without any added dosage.
Extra Brut: 0-6g/L of sugar. Becoming increasingly popular for traditional method wines, particularly in Champagne.
Brut: 0-12g/L of sugar. The majority of traditional method fizz on the market today is classified as brut, usually with about 8-10g/L of sugar. Note brut is French for raw, which is why it is drier than extra dry or dry.
Extra Dry: 12-17g/L of sugar. Prosecco is often classified at this sweetness level.
Sec or Dry: 17-32g/L of sugar. Sec is French for dry. The English translation is seen on the label just as often, unlike brut.
Demi-Sec: 32-50g/L of sugar. Typically, sweet Champagne or other traditional method fizz will be a demi-sec.
Doux: more than 50g/L of sugar. Roughly 200 years ago, most Champagnes would’ve fallen into this category with many pushing 300g/L of sugar! However, things have changed a lot since then and it is now very rare to see a sparkling wine in this category. The only wine I’ve come across that was this sweet was Inniskillin’s Vidal 2017 Sparkling Icewine; I tasted it on my Instagram back in March.
Definitions
None of the following terms are exclusive to traditional method wines, but this is where you are most likely to find them:
Non-Vintage (NV): A wine blended from base wines from more than year. They have shorter ageing requirements than vintage wines, often only a minimum of nine months on lees. They usually make up the bottom half of a producer’s range, although they will typically make up about 90% of production. The most affordable and accessible wines; although some can still be expensive just not as much as vintage wines. There are plenty of NV Champagnes in the £50-70 bracket.
Vintage: A wine where the base wines come from a single vintage, only made in the best years. The idea is that it captures the essence of the terroir over the course of a single year. For everyone in the EU (and those importing into it), a vintage wine must be at least 85% from the year on the label (this is how to tell if it’s a vintage wine). This gives the producer a little wiggle room to make the best wine possible, while still encapsulating the character of that year. Vintage Champagne is the exception, 100% of grapes must come from one year. Vintage wines also have more stringent ageing requirements, a minimum of 3 years on lees for Champagne, for example. As a result, they charge a premium price. There is a perception that vintage wines are intrinsically better than non-vintage but this is not necessarily the case.
Reserve Wines: In good years, a proportion of base wines may be put aside for use in future wines. These wines may be stored in stainless steel tanks, concrete eggs or oak barrels of various sizes. Bollinger store their reserve wines in magnums! However, keeping reserve wines is expensive so only the biggest (and most wealthy) producers have extensive, large scale collections.
Cuvée: Has two meanings in the world of sparkling wine. Firstly, it refers to the particular blend of grapes that makes up a wine. Secondly, it is the name of the first and best fraction of juice in the pressing cycle for sparkling wines.
Blanc de Blancs: French for white from whites. A sparkling white wine made solely from white grapes. When used, this almost always refers to a wine made solely Chardonnay, the only white grape in the three noble grapes of Champagne. However, the name can be applied as long as the grape or grapes are all white. Stylistically, these wines are often quite austere, linear and focused (particularly if its 100% Chardonnay) when compared to blanc de noirs or even classic blends of red and white grapes.
Blanc de Noirs: French for white from blacks. A white sparkling wine made solely from black/red grapes. Nearly all grapes, red or white, have a colourless juice. The colour and tannin in a red wine comes from the maceration (soaking) of the red skins in the juice during fermentation. Consequently, its possible to make white wine from red grapes. Blanc de noirs are nearly always made from the other noble grapes of Champagne: Pinot Noir and/or Pinot Meunier. Stylistically, these wines are often more opulent and seductive with a richer, rounder mouthfeel when compared to other sparkling wines.
Prestige Cuvée: This term is used to describe the best sparkling wine(s) in a producer’s range. These are wines of low volume and exceptional quality… consequently, they are eye-wateringly expensive. Occasionally, you’ll see the term used for wines in the £60-£80 range, but generally these wines will cost triple figure or even four figure sums. Well known prestige cuvées include many of the most famous names in wine: Louis Roederer’s Cristal, Dom Pérignon, Pol Roger’s Winston Churchill and Tattinger’s Comtes de Champagne. Closer to home, a few English producers have made prestige cuvées: Nyetimber’s 1086 and Chapel Down’s Kit’s Coty Coeur de Cuvée, for example.
Recommendations
I thought I’d end this piece by recommending some wines I believe are good starting points for exploring traditional method bubbly.
There is a lot of great value for money fizz out there. Crémant, Cap Classique and Cava provide very good affordable fizz in the £8-15 range. I’ve found Majestic to be a really good starting point. They sell two good South African Méthode Cap Classique from Graham Beck – the Brut and my favourite, the Brut Rosé NV. They also sell several of the wines from the Loire Valley heavyweight Bouvet Ladubay (both Crémant de Loire and Saumur) which I can heartily recommend. If you follow my Instagram account, you will know that I drink a lot of Loire wine, but unfortunately most of those are only available in France. Lately, I have noticed Langlois Chateau (one of the big six Saumur based producers, including the aforementioned Bouvet Ladubay, and one of my favourite producers) is being sold by some wine merchants including The Secret Cellar, my local wine merchant.
Other than Graham Beck, I have no experience with New World fizz unfortunately. Several of the big Champagne houses do have vineyards and wineries in places like the US, Argentina and Australia. I’ve heard good things about Louis Roederer’s non-French fizz, labelled under the ‘Roederer Estate’ and Moët & Chandon drop the Moët for their international wines.
I also don’t feel qualified to talk about Cava, so my only advise is to stay away from the supermarket bottom-of-the-shelf stuff. Cava has a bit of a problem with inconsistent quality at the bottom end – to the extent there is movement in Spain towards tightening restrictions to push up average quality. So, if possible, stretch to that £8-15 bracket. Beyond that vintage Cava is produced, you just have to find some (without going to Spain!).
When it comes to English quality sparkling wines, Chapel Down’s Classic NV Brut is a great entry to non-vintage wines. And I’m not just saying that because I work there but because it is the most widely available of all English fizz – Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Majestic all stock it. Also, it’s just a damn good wine! There is a lot of good vintage wine around £40, which is less than you’d pay for most vintage Champagnes. 2014 was a particularly good vintage for English quality sparkling wine and one to keep an eye out for.
As far as Champagne is concerned, the most affordable are often supermarket own brand champagne. Quite which one is the best though seems change every 5 minutes, but I've enjoyed Aldi's in the past. Going up a step, staying away from the big names might save you a few quid, but its these big names you find easily on supermarket shelves. My favourite entry level non-vintage Champagne is H.Blin’s Brut NV, again from The Secret Cellar, only £26 a bottle.
For online shopping, I’ve been using The Champagne Company frequently. As well as a massive and varied list of Champagnes, they have a great selection of other fizz from all round the world, including English quality sparkling wine, crémant, Cava and from the New World. As a bonus, their delivery charge is less than many.
Comments