From Vine to Glass: The Steps to Making Sparkling Wine
As harvest starts to approach, we have a look at all the preparations which need to have taken place before the grapes are ready to be taken off the vines and brought in for fermentation.
Ever thought you’d like to own a vineyard? Wander through the vines on a sunny afternoon, plucking the odd grape from bunches of ripe and ready Pinot Noir or Chardonnay? We thought it would be fun to run through all the steps you need to go through from planting to drinking your bottle of sparkling wine…
first steps
Step 1. Find a site for your vineyard. You’ll need to assess the soil types and subsoils, aspect, access, surrounding fields.
Step 2. Plant your chosen vines – ideally in April or May.
Step 3. Wait a few years – your vines need to establish their root systems and grow in order to be strong enough to bear a harvest. Normally two or three years.
Step 4. After several years of careful vineyard management, gather a team for harvest…
steps 5-8
Step 5. Pick the grapes! (by hand, if you want to make traditional method sparkling wine like Wiston does.
Step 6. Press the grapes. There are lots of presses available – we still use our traditional Champagne Coquard press from the 1970s – for our vintage wines.
Step 7. Allow the grape juice to start fermenting – either in stainless steel tanks or oak barrels, depending on what style you are after.
Step 8. Monitor the fermentations – making sure the yeast is doing its job well and converting all the sugar in the grapes into alcohol.
steps 9-11
Step 9. Allow the still wine to rest – normally for a good few months, until the following late spring /early summer.
Step 10. Stabilize the wine to make sure it is clear and clean.
Step 11. Blend the wines – this is when you blend your Chardonnay / Pinot Noir / Meunier.
steps 12-13
Step 12. Bottle the wines, with an additional hit of fresh yeast and sugar, and seal them securely. This is the key stage we know as ‘second fermentation’. The yeast will covert the sugar to more alcohol, and carbon dioxide, which will dissolve into the wine – biding its time before it can become the bubbles!
Step 13. WAIT. Again. Traditional method sparkling wines need many months resting on ‘lees’ (the dead yeast cells). In Champagne the minimum requirement is 12 months (15 month before release in total). The minimum requirement for PDO English Sparkling Wine is 9 months. We tend to allow much longer – giving the wine a chance to absorb some of the delicious brioche / toasty / biscuity notes from the yeast. Our NVs have at least 3 years on lees, while our vintages have at least 5 years.
steps 14-16
Step 14. If you are still with us… riddle your bottles. While the idea of hand-riddling is quite romantic, no operation actually does riddling by hand any more (although the riddling racks look good in wineries!)– and there is no quality difference between ‘hand’ and ‘machine’ riddled bottles.
Step 15. Disgorge your bottles. You’ll need a disgorging line for this. The upside down riddled bottles are dipped in -20°C brine to freeze the yeast plug in the neck, then the bottle is put upright, the plug shoots out, the bottle is topped up with dosage* and then the cork is put on, secured by the wire hood.
Step 16. WAIT again. Not compulsory, but we think the riddling / disgorging process is a bit of a shock to the system for the wine, so we like to let it rest for 6 months after disgorgement before releasing it into the world.
final steps
Step 17. Label / foil your bottle.
Step 18. You are ready! Chill, open and sip and enjoy!
It really is a long process, even if you take as little time as possible, from start to finish it is several years. So not something to enter into lightly… but a pursuit which certainly rewards the virtue of patience. Cheers!
