Making Sparkling Wine

All sparkling wines start life as still wines and have the fizz added later. The crucial factor in the quality of every sparkling wine is how the sparkle is added.

The Champagne Method

All the very best sparkling wine is made by the method developed in Champagne in France - methode champenoise. Any sparkling wine that is labelled 'traditional method' is made in this way.

First of all, a high quality, dry white wine is made; usually from a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes. The wine is then put into special, heavy-weight bottles and a fresh dose of yeast and sugar is added to start a second fermentation. The bottles are then capped and placed in cool cellars for up to 2 years. The yeasts and sugars create carbon dioxide gas which builds up, but as it cannot escape, then dissolves back into the wine.

Unfortunately the dead yeast leaves a large amount of sediment in the bottle, which needs to be moved towards the bottle neck in order to be removed. The bottles are traditionally stored in angled racks where they are turned and gently tapped by hand every day for a couple of months to achieve this - a process termed 'remuage'. However, mechanised racks now do this job in a few days.

In order to get the sediment out from the bottle the necks are frozen in freezing brine. The bottle is then turned upright, and releasing the cork expels the 'pellet' of sediment from the Champagne. A little sugar and vins de reserve (dosage) is then added to balance the Champagne. The bottles are corked, wired and allowed to rest for up to six months prior to release.

The Transfer Method

This is a less common system for creating a sparkling wine. This method starts off in bottles as for Champagne, but then swaps to a pressurised tank for filtering, removing the need for the expensive remuage step. The wine is then pumped, under pressure, into clean bottles.

The Tank Method

The Tank (or Charmat) method employs a large sealed tank which works in the same way as a giant bottle. Here the secondary fermentation still takes place naturally, by adding new yeast and sugar to a finished wine, but instead of taking place in bottles, the wine is held under pressure in large sealed tanks so that the equivalent of several thousand bottles re-ferment at the same time. The wine is cleared of sediment and bottled under pressure, directly from the tank. The bubbles are a little larger and disperse more quickly, but the tank method can produce good results.

Other Methods

Other systems for producing sparkling wine share the same objective: to dissolve carbon dioxide into the wine and preserve the bubbles in the bottle. The cheapest, and least satisfactory option is to pump still wine full of carbon dioxide, like a fizzy drink. This gives the wine large bubbles that disappear almost as soon as the bottle is opened.