Champagne making

 The main problem when the first are out is that they are sensitive to frost, and when this happens, the buds are destroyed. 

So for the last couple of weeks we were all very stressed out about the weather, but eventually, there is not much we can do and unfortunalely stress is not enough to rise temperature by 4 degres ! 

This massive freezing period happened tuesday morning. Just a few minutes at minus 4 were enough to destroy a lot of 2012 potential harvest.

This is annonying, but not dramatic, the whole Champagne has built a kind of insurance for the kind of cases. Every year, we are allowed to store a fraction of our production as "réserve". These wines cannont be bottled but in year like this they can be used to compensate the loss.

So eventually, we will be able to make some champagne next year, with this reserve and the grapes we are going to harvest.

But,at the end of the day, I can say to myself that this is OK, seeing the buds destroyed by frost is not cool. In a way, I think we all carry a part of the sorrow of the generations who preceded us. For my great-grand-father 80 years ago, or even for my dad 40 years ago, this would have been a real desaster.

 Your are planning a visit to Champagne area soon, of course you already planned to attend one of our champagne tasting course, and you mignt want to visit Reims Cathedrale, and maybe one or two big Maisons, have a stroll in the vinyard, but you might still be looking for accomodation !

Well here is a very nice adress in Epernay  : Les Epicurien is a luxury Chambre d'Hôte (this would be the French for Bed and Breakfast) in Epernay's town centre.

Obviously, I have never slept there myself as it is just a few miles from home, but Laure and I certainly have a lot in common, our passion for Champagne to start with !

Last year, the debourrement (the only word I found is the budding ? is that a noun ? an adjective ? well let's stick to French for this one, le débourrement is this time when the vegetation buds blossom (not the floral buds, that is going to happen in a few months).

Well last year, that happened on the 4th of April. And it was incredibly early.

Well, we are the 29th of March, and that is it, the vegetative cycle had started ! A week in advance compare to last year.

I feel like we might be harvesting early...

 

For many reasons, wine tasting is very difficult

First, on a cultural point of view, olfaction is not a sens we really educate. The very first things we would teach toddlers are colours not the smell of banana or liquorice. This lack of olfactive education makes it very difficult for human beings to put words on olfactive stimuli.

Another reason which makes tasting difficult is the social aspect of it. We are always a bit scared of getting it wrong, being ridulous, saying it smells like ham where in fact it was hibiscus flower. And as a result, the group would expulse us from the cave and we would be eaten by dinosaurs...

Maybe the biggest issue is that we are really bad at smelling. Physiologically we haven't got that much olfactive captors. Dogs for example are much better than us.

We are really good at seeing things, we see colours, and 3D, we see things that are close and things that are far away. But even with this really powerful sense, we stuggle sometimes to put the correct words on what we see ! For example, which colour is this square ?

For some us it 'd be green, for others it would be blue. So even with ths highly developed sense, we can't gove a definite answer ! So imagine the difficulties we face with smell...

Science and technology allow to precisely answer the question of the colour of the square, in any Pantone colour-chart, this is 320C, no matter where we are, the temperature or the time of day, this is 320C, this is an absolute.

But sofar science and technology fail to achieve this unquestionnable absolute for smells.

So our main problem remains, how to express the sensation we feel when tasting wine ?

Maybe a solution would be not to try to put WORDS on what we feel but to express it in another way.

I gave the question some thought 2 weeks ago, as I was in Milan for a tasting event. Chiara Giovoni who wrote the tasting sheets in Italian for the event associated each Champagne of the night with a painting.

I find this idea both brillant and effective. A few days before the tasting when she asked me who my favourite painter was, I imagined that was what she had in mind and started to think about what association I would make for each Champagne. And for the Absolument Brut we both chose :

 

To be honnest, the choice was limited to Matisse, Van Gogh et Klee. But us choosing the same painting is actulally not the point. the point is there are different ways of describing a wine than words.

We can refer to season or occasions : a Christmas wine, spicy and exuberant, a autumn wine with hints of nuts and fruit compote. We can refer to musical pieces or to landscapes.

"Take Five on a deserted beach" could say much more about what you feel than ready made sentences. 

The main thing, the only thing that we really matters is that it should be YOUR description, not your neighbour's, not the latest ultimate wine-book.

 

Last year, the guys at Transatlantic Bubbles had two of our cuvees tasted by Josh Raynolds from Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar.

The two reviews were really good with marks of 91 for the Absolument Brut and 92 for the 2002 vintage.

 

 

Most of the wines Jeff and Mike's selection got brillant reviews which shows how reliable these two can be when they taste. This was certainly not a big news to me ! (you might think my opinion is biased given that they have been importing our Champagne in the US for 4 years now, but they are amongst the most knowledgeable people I know about wine).

Nevertheless I suppose it is as nice for them to be recognised for their wise selection of Champagnes as it is for us for our Champagnes.

 

 

 

First and most importantly a very happy new year to those who read this blog (yep, happy new year to the two of you...)

Let's have projects, let's have fun and let's have bubbles !

In 2009, one of my project for the New Year was to buy some barrels and to have my first vinifcation in them. I had a clear idea of I wanted without a clue one how to achieve my goal.

I wanted the vanilla, the caramel the onctuosity without the sharp oak notes.

I got insights from fellow wine-makers who worked with barrels and I eventually bought 6 second-hand burgundy barrels in Santenay.

At harvest 2009, some Chardonnay from Avize ended up fermenting in those 6 barrels, first racking 10 days after, another racking at the end of march 2010.

Bottling occured on July 27th. Half the batch was closed with the standard capsule+bidule and the other half with a cork and a metal clip (all the details in this post).

 

These bottles are now 16 months old. This means that I could put them on the market. I won't but the appellation d'origine contrôlée Champagne allows to sell bottles after 15 months.

But as patience is certainly not my main virtue, I had to open some and taste the difference !

It is a diffucult exercice to taste such wines objectively, I put so much effort and expectation in them.

And as objectively as I can be, I have to admit they both are delicious... 

I actually tasted them three times over december.

And each time I was amazed to see (taste) how different they are.

I was expecting the capsule+bidule champagne to be more mature but it is actually the opposite. I feel like the cork+clip will need much more time to develop. 

The oakiness of the barrel shows more in the cork+clip champagne, with  tropical fruit and ripe banana, but it remains discreet and fondu (what could be the word in English for that ?)

Globally, what really struck me was how fast they were changing. They are blooming adolescant at the monment. They would love Hello Kitty on Monday, Justin Bieber on Tuesday, Rihanna by Thursday and before the end of the week, they would ask you for your Sergeant Pepper album.

So I shall give them a bit more time.

 Have a wonderful Christmas !

 Mireille is a bottle of Champagne. Well, Mireille is all bottles of Champagne Corbon. She (yes, Mireille is a girl) travels the world (you can check picture here).

Well, Mireille is getting ready for Christmas but kinda got lost in the Chistmas Tree.

Can you spot her ?

Answer on Christmas'eve !

 

Who is in Decanter this month ?

Well ... Me ! (amongst other, but is that even worth mentionning ?). Well it is not me Agnès, but the Brut d'Autrefois and the Brut Prestige.

 

For the first time, Decanter has tasted grower champagnes and our champagnes were amongst the 94 champagne tasted.

 

Part of the panel was Michael Edwards who wrote the very documented and beautifully illustrated The Finest Wines of Champagne.

 

If REALLY you want to know who else made it to Decanter 3-star recommended Champagne list, you can dowload it here.

 

Both the Brut d'Autrefois and the Prestige get the 3-star recommendation, no Champagne amongst the 94 tasted got the 5-star Decanter award. And it seems that the 6 members of the panel were surprised by that result as each of them expected at least one. But it seems that as grower champagnes have stronger personnalities it is difficult to find one which would please the 6 of them. Let's see that as the proof of the diversity in excellence of Grower Champagnes !

If you re visiting Champagne area soon, you might want to come and visit us in Avize and enjoy one of our Champagne Course. And you might as well wonder what is on the agenda.

First of all, all our courses come with a thourough explanation on how Champagne is made. This doesn't mean how I make Champagne (even if, of course I cover that as well) but how all producers make Champagne from the big names to the smallest ones. Obviously we all follow the same recipe which the "Appellation d'origine Contrôlée" but at each stage of the process, Champagne producers, big or small deal with different constraints according to

• where the grapes come from, and from which grape variety,
• how long I want to keep the Champagne before selling it,
• how many bottles i am producing,
• etc.

During these courses, I try to explain all these big or samll diferences which eventually make thousands of Champagnes with different personnalities.

 

But this is not it ! We also talk about smelling and tasting and describing what we smell and taste as well.

At one point, we will have to recognise the product in closed pots just using your nose, and believe me, it is not as easy as it sounds !

 

 

 

If you want to know what people who attended think of our courses, you can check our Tripadvisor page :

For the revival of this blog, I have decided to go back to basics and answer the very simple questions you might have about Champagne.

Maybe, you came to visit us or maybe you are planning to participate to one of our Champagne Courses, if so this post is not for you (as you already know is answer, or you will soon).

 

A huge part of the magic of Champagne comes from the bubbles, that is to say from carbon dioxyde. 

When making wine, we use the yeast to transform the sugar in alcohol, but while they do so they produce as well a lot of by-products : glycerol, aromatic substances and ... carbon dioxyde.

 

Making Champagne is a two-fermentation process. First fermentation happens in open vats, so the carbon disoxyde would go back where it came from : the atmosphere. He will be re-use by the vinyard during photosynthesis to produce more grapes to produce more wine. (et la boucle est bouclée !).

The second fermentation happens in the bottle. Carbon dioxyde is trapped the only solution is for it to dissolve into the wine, creating the effervescence.

photo © Gérard Liger-Belair

Gérard Liger-Belair has studied effervescence in Champagne and even wrote a book about it ! With really nice prictures of bubbles.

I am back. For good this time ! Sure, this blog has been abandoned for most of last year but this was due to technical reasons (which I have to admit I don't understand much about...something about google robots, unvalid urls and the good old Murphy's law...).

But here I am, with a brand new beautiful website.

Vendanges 2011 are behind us now. What a strange year it has been :

- in April, we were eating outside,

- in May, springfrost damaged some vinyards (you can check there, that is in French but the photos speack for themselves)

- in June, we were getting the jumpers out of the wardrobes,

- in July, it was hailstorms (here),

- and August, well, August was a bit all that (except for the frost, this would really have been the cerise sur le gâteau).

But here we are now, harvest is over and all that is just souvenir.

I am very happy with the harvest : the team, the weather and most importantly the quality of the grapes were great.

2011 harvest was about making the right decisions, and I am pleased with the decision I took of harvesting early. The level of acidity in the musts was still high but this what I am looking for (the wines from 2011 will probably not end up on your dining table for 6 or 7 years, so I was, as always really looking for this acidity).

More than for any vintage I can remember, the picking date is going to make a true difference on the vins clairs and these are going to be even more interesting to taste next spring.

 

 

 

Day 2, the day began under the rain with low spirit.

But it was over by 10 and the rest of the day has been nice and sunny.

 

 

 

Here we are at last ! Harvest started this morning. No more arguing on starting dates, no more anxious checks on the weather forecasts.

I love harvest. There are so many things going on : I really enjoy this never ending swirl of activity.

Of course in 9 days, I will be knackered and I will probably not find harvest so enjoyable ... I am just really enthousiastic because it has just started today !

 

We were a bit concerned because of rot, but sofar so good. The grapes picked today were healthy and sweet (175 g of sugar per liter). We are picking grapes in Avize for a few days, things might get different in the Pinot Meunier at the end of the week.

 

Just a few days before picking starts.

It will actually starts tomorrow in the earliest villages. In Avize, we will start on the 14th.

Every Monday and Thursday since the 18th of August, in each village some growers pick some samples to follow maturation and decide on the date of picking. Today was our last day, as from next Tuesday, each of us will have to take his responsability on choosing which and plot to pick and when.

 

 

Photo 1 : Some of today's samples

Photo 2 : bunches of grapes are counted, inspected and weighed

Photo 3 : samples are then pressed in a small press

Photo 4 : the must of which we measure acidity and sugar level (I forgot to take the picture of that, You will have to come back next year)

It is been raining for 3 days now. A real rain, not one of those rain which just wets the dust. The grass is even greener now than last week.

 

This post is for those of you who are delighted by the thought of having a nice glass of Champagne but stressed out by the idea of opening the bottle.

Well, this is my 8-step lesson to perfect bottle-opening.

A child can do it (I was myself a child when I learned !)

 

	Step 1 : to open a bottle of Champagne, you need a bottle of Champagne... Corbon.   (it works for all maisons de champagne though, but you shouldn't be drinking anything else than Corbon)
	Step 2 : Tear away the foil. Keep the top part of the foil on the bottle.
	Step 3 : Undo the wirehood. From now on, always secure the cork with your thumb or your hand. You never know (your guests might love practical jokes and have shaken the bottle like mad. ha! ha! ha!)
	Step 4 : Loosen the wirehood, so that it doesn't get in the way of the cork. Personnaly, I leave the wirehood + the foil on the bottle, I think it gives a better grip.
	Step 5 : This is the tricky part. The cork is stuck to the inside wall of the bottle. The only effort is to unstick it. To do so, hold firmly the cork with one hand and turn gently the bottle wit ht he other. Remember, turning the bottle is much easier than turning the cork.
	Step 6 : Nearly there. Now let the carbon dioxyde do the job. (pressure inside a bottle reach almost 6 bars, so it pushes the cork out). Remember to hol firmly the cork. If it is difficult or too slow you can help by gently turning the bottle.
	Step 7 : Really all you have to do is holding the cork while the pressure pushes it. Unless you are a Formula1 Champion. (if you are a Formula1 Champion and you are reading this blog, please levae a comment)
	Step 8 : Et voilà ! Easy as pie. Cheers !

 

 

 

I am going to be very honnest, I can't really afford George Clooney or Marion Cotillard as spokedface for Champagne Corbon.

So I took a bet on a future mega-star.

 

His name is Gabriel, he is one month old and I strongly believe you are going to hear about him a lot ... Just give him 20 years.

It is really over for Vintage 2009.

The wine from the oak barrels I bought last year is now in bottle.

Half of it has been closed with modern combinaison of bidule and capsule.

Second half with the tradition cork and metal clip

And once again, we have to be patient and wait for a couple of years to taste

 

This video shows the "clipping" machine.

 

 

 

Photo 1 : Moi with the clipping machine

Photo 2 : close up of the cork and clip

Photo 3 : the bottles are different, the ring being square so the clip can hold on the bottle

Photo 4 : a brand new piece of equipment (no this hairy arm is not mine)

In the winery, we are nearly done.

Everything has been ranked, tasted, ranked again and either bottled or pre-blend. A final bottling next week and we will be ready for vintage 2010 to come in !

We are going to bottle the wine out of my barrels ! Sofar I am very pleased with the results. But I will have to wait another few years to taste it as champgne ! (sometimes I wonder if I am patient enough to be a wine-maker)...

 

Photo 1 : Dad helping me ranking the barrels

Photo 2 : far from Champagne glamour, the lees

Photo 3 : winery during ranking.

Photo 4 : 500 litres that have to go somewhere else as wine always has to be protect from air.

A bottle of Champagne si a very resistant container. I heard that it can hold up to 36 bars of pressure. That is if the bottle is perfect.

This is the bottom of the pile of the 2009 vintage that has been bottled last month.

As fermentation starts, the pressure inside the bottle increase and if there is even the slightest flaw in the glass, the bottle can't hold the pressur and explodes.

Good thing is that the pile is built in such a way that even if the broken bottle is at the very bottom of the pile like here, the whole pile doesn't collapse.

Let's start at the very beginning, to make Champagne you need … grape. The guys who grow the grapes are called the « vignerons », it is the original definition for this French word. The vigneron is th...

Et voilà ! 2009 vintage now seats gently in the cellar. As usual nothing went according to plan. We were supposed to start à 7am. And when we switch the machines on ... nothing happened. The tireuse (machine where the bottles are filled) would start. This was annoying because the yeast were already in the wine, so we had to find a way to fill these bottles on this day ! Eventually a friend lend us another tireuse which ... well ... worked ... kind of... Most of my colleagues now outsource bottling and I can understanrd why ! The "tireuse" that saved the day   Caps   Bidules   the pile at the beggining ...   And at the end !    

Tomorrow is an important day for our Grand Cru 2009 as it is going to be bottled. After spending months with its fine lees, time for it to go in the bottles and wait in the cellar for another 8 or 10 years. This vintage is very promising to me. We harvested early and managed to avoid the drop in acidity. We stopped the malo-lactic fermentation too.  Analytically it shows 7g of acidity (that is g per l in H2SO4, don't ask me, this is the standard unit of mesure for acidity in wine making) and 2.94 in pH. So it can stay in the cellar for a long time to develop at its full potentiel. AND it is very elegant and flowery. So we are getting ready for tomorrow, we received the bottles earlier today. We are now using the new "light" bottle (835g vs. 900g for the previous standard). "bidules" and "capsules" are here as well. What is left to do is adding sugar in the wine. And tomorrow just before starting, adding the yeast.                  

As a Champagne producer, people usually have a lot of questions about the process, about the grapes, etc. ONce, I was asked if I ever took a Champagne bath.

French people often ask if putting a teaspoon in an open Champagne bottle would prevent it to go flat. As a matter of fact, there is this belief in France that it would

Well, it doesn't.

 

The carbon dioxyde trapped in the Champagne just wants to get out and a teaspoon wouldn't stop it (a table spoonL neither !).

How to prevent an open bottle to go flat ? Well, there is not effective solution. There are stoppers.

But sooner or later (after just a couple of days), the Champagne would go flat anyway.

 

So the only solution is to finish the bottle (and buy an other one !)

 

PS as I like my Champagne cold (10-12 °C) and my bath warm, champagne bath doesn't really sound appealing to me...

 

 

 

One often says that my job is a man's job. And it's true.

I do not think of it this way but, wine-making is often perceived as a male profession.
In fact, it is often a mr-and-mrs-job. Monsieur handles the vine and wine and Madame manages the office and clients.
Making a champagne de vigneron means having many jobs in one. And the first of these, the one without which all others would be irrelevant is to grow grapes.
The culture of the vine is also the most physical. Working on the vine requires strength and / or endurance and I would be quite unable to do it alone. (but I know some female winegrowers who can do any man's job).
So for this work, I am very thankful for the help from my father who is helping me a lot and Guillaume, who also works for me in the vineyard.

Making wine does not require actual physical force, and that's what I love, actually making wine.

Once the grapes grown and the champagne is produced, it must be sold. This is a unisex business, I do not think men are better than women at selling.

Finally comes the administrative part of the business. If it comes last in line is certainly the first in terms of time spent. And there I think I can save time. Not because I am a woman, but because my studies and my experience in the industry have learned me a lot in term of organization, IT, etc.

Finally in conclusion, I believe that there are so many facets to being a wine-maker that anyone man or woman would find a way to enjoy it. You can love to sell, love to be alone, be creative.

Having said that, is the way I make Champagne influenced by the fact that I am a woman? Certainly, it is inevitable.

My Champagne is certainly influenced by what I am: a woman, a wife, a mother, an engineer, the daughter of my parents, my brother's sister, someone who loves wine, loves cooking, loves to create, someone a little stressed, a little stressful ...

Each spring, the buds come out, one day they are not there, and a few days later they are there. This always amazes me. I am very cartesian, and I know that all this is can be explained by biochemical reactions, certainly very complicated yet humanly understandable, but nevertheless year after year I find this eternal rebirth absolutely magical.
A man (my father for example) will have a much more pragmatic approach, he will simply note that the buds are out and evaluate what it means in terms of picking date, etc.

But there is certainly a form of reserve, I can't imagine a male winemaker drooling over the newly-out-bud in front of his colleagues. It would be like a footballer advertising for mascara. Not male enough !

But it does not really affect how I grow my grapes (this is probably arguable).
However, in making champagne itself (after harvest), then I think everyone really has the means to express themselves.

I believe that some winemakers are not really interested in this creative process.

For some, it is the oenologist who makes the champagne ! a helping Snake oil, abracadabra, a tight filtering, bottling in January 15 and voila!

I can understand that one that thinks making wine is boring … or scary. Because ultimately, make wine, is also about taking the risk of making bad wine, and one may decide to go to take the safest route. And the surest is to follow the advice of a oenologist whose job is precisely to make champagne safely.

What I am sure of is that I make Champagne (almost) as my father taught me to do. That is to say in fact that it practically makes itself. No adjuvant, no filtration, no collage.
Not because of an unreasonable attachment to tradition, not because I'm scared to change anything.
Simply because on an intellectual point of view, this is comforting to let things happen.

And it has something to do with honesty, respect for the terroir that encompasses respect for its consumers (because I can't be calling myself a champagne-grower if my champagne was manufactured in a champagne factory).
And ultimately, I think my father's champagnes are just the best champagnes in the world (or maybe the universe).

Here we are, at the very begining of the whole process. The buds have opened just a few days ago. And as the weather had been very generous the leaves have grown. We are a good ten days late compared to last year.

This bud was eaten by "mange-bourgeons" (litterally bud-eater). For those, the 2010 vegetative cycle is over before even starting.

Here are some corks. The one on the left is brand new. It is a perfet cylinder but for the bevel. The corks in the middle are old corks. They would love to recover their original shape, but they won't because the force applied during capping and the pressure they had to bear when they were in office were too strong. Imagine: no less than 6 bars inside a bottle, the carbon dioxide pushes toward the exit at a rate of 6 kg per square cm , but outside, the metal wire cage which prevents out! Not easy being a stopper. The shape of these used corks is caracteritic from Champagne stopper. In French we say the cork "juponne". A "jupe" being a skirt. The fourth cap, it doesn't "skirt" anymore. This is the sign of a champagne remained corkedfor a long time (I would say at least ten years, but the storage conditions also affect the behavior of the cap). We say that the cork "cheville", a "cheville" being an ankle. This does not prejudge the quality of Champagne. You might have been told that it is best to drink Champagne during the year after its disgorgement, but it really depends on the Champagne. Some Champagnes are made to be drunk quickly, on the other hand, other are vinified to be kept for a long time.

This was one of my goal for 2010, to start this blog in English. Well blogosphere here I come ! My objective is to share with you views about my job as a Champagne-producer. And maybe one or two other things about Champagne. I suppose this post won't be read by many people but if you are here somewhere on the other side of the Internet wellcome ! and I hope you will enjoy it !