12/11/07 Champagne Part 2

Welcome to Vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran. Today we are continuing our series about Champagne and Sparkling wines. Now - let's look at how Champagne is made. To begin with, all wines are made by a process called fermentation, where yeast converts sugar to alcohol and carbonic gas. In the case of Champagne this is done twice. The second time the fermentation takes place in still wine in the bottle. By capping the bottle tightly the gas remains dissolved in the wine until the cap is popped off. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir represent the still wines used as the base in making a bubbly wine. Often reserve wines, meaning literally wines kept in reserve from previous years, are blended with the base wine. Next, a mixture of still wine, sugar, yeast and yeast nutrients, are added to each bottle of the blended wine. The wines are topped with a cap that has a cup to catch the spent yeast sediment in the neck of the bottle, and the wine is allowed to go through a second fermentation. This is where the bubbles begin. When the wine has finished its fermentation, the yeast sediment has collected in the neck in that cup beneath the cap. The trick is to get the sediment out and not loose too much of the gas. The bottle's neck is frozen and the sediment becomes solid, and when opened the plug of sediment pops out. The wine is finished with a cork and a metal cage. This has been a simple explanation for what is a long and painstaking method of making wine, and one of the reasons Champagne can be expensive. Thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.