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[video] Press (Gently) For Champagne

Bubbleschool takes a look at the delicate art of juicing a sparkling wine grape.

Welcome, bubbleheads.

After this video on where stuff is in Champagne proved popular:

[free] Video - Where Stuff Is In Champagne

·
May 7, 2023
[free] Video - Where Stuff Is In Champagne

Watch now (8 min) | Welcome, bubbleheads Part of my plan for this Substack is to create some more accessible, free content to go alongside the geek-outs and reports. After all the Printemps posts… (like this one:) …it probably makes sense to show you where some of these places are, and how they relate to each other.

…I wanted to cover another unique part of sparkling wine production: pressing. It’s nifty business, just coaxing out the most delicate juice while leaving the sturdier stuff (often included in still wines) out.

When people say sparkling wine making is ‘technical’, it’s this sort of thing that they mean. All winemakers need to think about pressing, but sparkling wine owes a great deal of its delicacy and refreshment value to how the grapes are handled.

It’s also one of those subjects that sparkling winemakers will, in my experience, gladly delve into an in-depth discussion on; I remember talking to Brad Greatrix at Nyetimber at length on the vagaries of pressing English wine grapes a few years ago, whilst just last year my conversation with Rodolphe Peters at Champagne Peters went down a rabbit hole that bottomed out with a discussion over something called ‘flow control’.

If it’s that important to them, then it must be worth looking at.

If you think these are worth half a glass of a decent cuvée, please do become a paid subscriber to Six Atmospheres. There’s lots of bonus content for you:

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