Wine making
Champagne Mathieu Princet
A soon as the harvest is over, wine making starts. It’s a slow making process each stage counts and gives its label, grapes quality is essential and the wine-maker will add value to it enhancing the resulting wine through years.
Harvesting
Our press is a horizontal one crushing 4000 kgs or 8000 pounds grapes within 5 or 6 hours to give out 25.5 hl of juice qualified as such vintage is the first 20 hl juice, it will be kept for millesimes when the quality is remarkable.
Then comes the first taille 3 hl and the second one 2.5 hl ; they are pumped out to different vats after staying 10 hours in an open one to evacuate the first depot.
Wine-making process
The first transformation is achieved by alcoholic fermentation (about 11°) within weeks sometimes some sugar is needed to raise about one degree of alcohol to the whole lot after a rainy summer ; we use the malo-lactive exchange to bring milky flavours that gradually become toasty and buttery ; the wines are cleared and stabilized and vats will be full to the brim to avoid oxygen ; all these operations last several months.
Wine tasting parties take place to prepare blends ; some of the wine will be kept for the 2 following years, as still wine in vats, and they will partially be used the following year or the next one.
Blending
It is typical of champagne making according to the vine stocks, years, vintage etc… the wine-maker’s style is prominent, his experience and vat-tasting are his guides the « unique » taste of such wines are definite and label the company.
