The Art of Making
English Sparkling Wine
These illustrations, showing the various stages of making bubbles, were beautifully painted for us by a great friend, Caroline Finlayson — a supporter, from its inception, of Winding Wood Vineyard .
1. Preamble to harvest
Grape analysis for sugar and acid levels. We want sugars to rise and acids to drop.
2. Pressing the cuvee and taille
Duration about 2 hours per press. The grapes must be raked by hand between pressings. An arduous job.
3. First fermentation is in barrel
Wild yeasts and chaptalisation. No sulphur added if possible. Around 9 months in barrel. Malolactic fermentation to soften acids.
4. Second fermentation in bottle after barrel ageing
More yeast and sugar added with crown cap to create the fizz.
5. Maturation on lees
Minimum of 24 months with the bottles lying on their lees in stillages. The yeast breaks down over time. This is called autolysis.
6. Riddling prior to disgorgement
The dead yeast (‘lees’) is riddled so as to lodge in the neck of the bottle. Before the gyroplette was invented, riddling was done by hand in a pupitre.
7. Disgorging the lees
These are disgorged by freezing the neck or by a la voileur, flipping off the crown cap. Yeast lozenge pops out under huge pressure (6 bar)
8. Adding the dosage at this stage
Liqueur d’expédition a syrup of sugar and wine which re-fills the volume lost at disgorging. Cork goes in with wirehead (muselet).
9. The foil will be slipped over the wirehead via a foiling machine
Then the 3 labels: neck, front and back. Et voila. We then let the wine settle for 6 months before release.
Three years minimum from grape to glass.