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IT Champagne is not manufactured. Champagne emerges — in a process that stretches over years and whose core is a simple idea: the second fermentation takes place in the very bottle that later stands on the table. No tank, no transfer, no shortcuts. What distinguishes the Méthode Champenoise from the Charmat method, which produces Prosecco and most other sparkling wines, is not merely a technical gimmick. It is a fundamentally different understanding of what sparkling wine can be.
From pressing whole grapes through the still fermentation of the base wine and its composition from different vintages and sites to the second fermentation in the bottle, ageing on the lees, riddling, disgorgement and the final dosage — eight steps that have remained essentially unchanged in their sequence since the 18th century. Each one offers scope for decision-making, and this is precisely where craftsmanship separates from industrial product.
The winemakers we gather on lebendigeweine.de are without exception Récoltants-Manipulants — producers who grow, vinify and market their own grapes. What ends up in the bottle at a Larmandier-Bernier, a Georges Laval or a Horiot is the expression of a specific site, a specific vintage, a specific signature.
Pressurage — The Art of Pressing
Everything begins with the press, and already here Champagne works differently from any other wine region. The grapes are pressed as whole bunches — not destemmed, not crushed. 4,000 kilograms of grapes yield exactly 2,550 litres of must after pressing, as the regulations require. The first 2,050 litres are called Cuvée and are considered the best quality: fine acidity, clear fruit, little phenolic extraction. The next 500 litres, the Taille, contain more tannins and colour pigments. Many ambitious winemakers use exclusively the Cuvée.
The fact that whole bunches are pressed has a simple physical reason: the stems act as drainage channels and allow the juice to flow off quickly and gently, without remaining in contact with skins and pips for too long. This is particularly crucial with Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier — red grape varieties from which white wine is to be produced.
Cuvée (first 2,050 L from 4,000 kg): Finer acidity, clearer fruit, fewer phenolics. Used for the finest champagnes.
Taille (next 500 L): More tannins, more colour pigments, fuller body. Often vinified separately or sold.
Deliberately uses a half-sized traditional press, which allows him to press his tiny harvest quantities in separate lots — individual parcels, individual picking passes — rather than homogenising everything in one large pressing.
Première Fermentation — The Base Wine
The freshly pressed must is fermented — initially quite still, without carbon dioxide. The result is a lean, acid-driven white wine, the Vin Clair, in which no one would spontaneously find pleasure. The alcoholic fermentation often runs at comparatively low temperatures to preserve fruit aromas and create a clean base for everything that follows.
The malolactic fermentation — the bacterial conversion of sharp malic acid into milder lactic acid — divides Champagne into two camps. Some allow it because it makes the wine rounder, creamier, more stable. Others block it because they want to preserve the freshness, the tension, the ageability of the base wine. A champagne without malo retains a nervous, almost citrus-like acid structure over years, whilst one with malo opens earlier and shows more suppleness.
Precision and pure fruit. Reductive environment preserves primary aromas. Standard amongst the great houses.
Structure and micro-oxygenation. Subtle spice, more texture. Used barrels — no vanilla oak.
Pierre Larmandier ferments his base wines in Stockinger casks made from Austrian oak — not new barriques, but used, neutral barrels that give the wine texture without masking it aromatically. Tarlant experiments with terracotta amphorae. Lacourte-Godbillon in Écueil goes even further: their barrel wood comes from the forest that borders directly onto the vineyards — terroir in the most literal sense, from soil to cask.
Assemblage — The Art of Composition
Assemblage is what distinguishes Champagne from almost all other sparkling wine regions. The cellar master doesn’t have one wine before them, but dozens — from different grape varieties, different sites, different vintages. From these building blocks, the final cuvée is composed. At the great houses, it’s about reproducing the same house style year after year. For the growers on lebendigeweine.de, it’s about expression.
The reserve wines are the most powerful tool in this process. Some growers maintain veritable solera systems modelled on sherry production: a barrel is never completely emptied, but continually topped up with the new vintage, so that over the years a multi-layered continuum forms. Huré Frères in Ludes have maintained their solera since 1982 — over forty vintages flow together. Bonnet-Ponson started in 2004, Horiot has maintained a solera for his Sève since 2007.
At the same time, there’s a counter-movement: growers who radically limit assemblage. Marguet bottles four different single vineyards separately in Ambonnay — each site its own wine, showing the terroir of a specific piece of land. Georges Laval in Cumières does something similar: his lieux-dits Les Chênes, Les Hautes Chèvres and Cumières are field names with their own geological identity. An approach closer to Burgundy than to classic Champagne.
More about the terroirs of Champagne
Tirage — The Second Fermentation in the Bottle
Once the base wine is composed, it’s bottled — together with the liqueur de tirage, a mixture of wine, sugar and selected yeast. Precisely 24 grams of sugar per litre are needed to generate around six atmospheres of pressure in the sealed bottle. That’s three times as much as in a car tyre. The yeast metabolises the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide — about 1.2 per cent by volume is added to the base wine — and because the CO₂ cannot escape, it dissolves in the wine.
The French call this phase prise de mousse, the „seizing of the foam“, and it lasts six to eight weeks. The bottle becomes the fermenter — each individual one undergoes its own fermentation. This is the exact opposite of tank fermentation, where thousands of litres ferment simultaneously. The Charmat method is efficient and reproducible. Bottle fermentation is laborious, space-intensive — but it produces a finer, more persistent mousse and an aromatic spectrum that tank fermentation simply cannot deliver.
Méthode Champenoise: Second fermentation in the bottle. Months to years of lees contact. Finer perlage, more complex aromas (brioche, nuts). Champagne, Crémant, Cava.
Charmat Method: Second fermentation in pressurised tank. Weeks of lees contact. Fresher fruit, larger bubbles. Prosecco, Sekt.
Ageing on the Lees — Autolysis
After the second fermentation, the wine rests on the lees deposit. The yeast has done its work, the sugar is consumed, and the cells begin to die. What follows is autolysis — a slow biochemical process that fundamentally transforms the Champagne. The cell walls break down, releasing amino acids, polysaccharides and mannoproteins. It is these compounds that give aged Champagne its characteristic aromas of brioche, toasted nuts, butter and biscuit. The mannoproteins make the wine creamier and stabilise the perlage — the bubbles become finer the longer the wine lies on the lees.
The law prescribes minimum periods: 15 months for Non-Vintage, 36 months for vintage Champagne. For ambitious growers, these are regulatory lower limits. Three years is more of a minimum for the producers on lebendigeweine.de, five to seven the norm, ten not uncommon. Louise Brison in Celles-sur-Ource releases no Champagne before five years of lees ageing.
The cellars where this ageing takes place are anything but interchangeable. Drappier in Urville uses vaults from 1152, built by Cistercian monks — constant ten to twelve degrees, nearly one hundred per cent humidity, absolute silence. In the chalk tunnels beneath Reims and Épernay, the Crayères, much of Champagne matures under conditions that no modern climate-controlled cellar can replicate.
Remuage — Riddling
After years of ageing, the lees deposit must be removed from the bottle. It sits on the side of the horizontally stored bottle and must migrate into the neck. For this purpose, riddling was invented in the 19th century — allegedly by the Widow Clicquot, whose cellar master drilled holes in a kitchen table to insert the bottles upside down. From this developed the Pupitres, the riddling racks.
In traditional remuage, the riddler turns the bottle daily by an eighth of a turn over six to eight weeks and gradually tilts it steeper. At the end it stands almost vertically on its head, the lees deposit cleanly in the neck. A skilled riddler moves up to 40,000 bottles a day. The Gyropalette, a computer-controlled riddling cage, achieves the same result in three to five days and has replaced manual work in almost all operations.
6–8 weeks, 1/8 turn per day. Up to 40,000 bottles/day per riddler. Nearly extinct specialisation.
3–5 days, computer-controlled. Hundreds of bottles simultaneously. Identical result, incomparable efficiency.
Still riddles by hand — not because it is qualitatively better, but rather as a statement of a working philosophy that leaves no step to automation. A commitment to artisanal control from vineyard to finished Champagne.
Dégorgement — The Dramatic Moment
When the yeast deposit sits cleanly in the bottle neck, it must come out. Dégorgement is the most technically delicate moment of the entire production process: the bottle is under six atmospheres of pressure, and when opening, only the yeast should escape. The method commonly used today, dégorgement à la glace, solves this elegantly: the bottle neck is immersed in a brine bath at minus 25 degrees, the yeast deposit freezes into an ice plug, and when the crown cap is opened, this plug shoots cleanly out of the bottle.
The older method, dégorgement à la volée, works without freezing. The dégorgeur opens the upturned bottle and lets the pressure expel the yeast — a technique requiring experience, speed and a certain degree of fearlessness.
Many récoltants-manipulants print the day of disgorgement on the bottle. This reveals two things: how long the wine spent on the lees, and how long it has matured since disgorgement. A freshly disgorged Champagne shows more vivacity and nervousness. Post-disgorgement ageing rounds off, integrates the dosage, brings harmony.
Dosage — The Final Decision
After disgorgement, a small volume is missing from the bottle — the space left by the yeast. This volume is topped up with the liqueur d’expédition, a mixture of wine and sugar, whose composition is the final and perhaps most controversial decision in the entire production process.
Brut Nature is the most radical statement a Champagne grower can make. Without the cosmetic correction of sugar, the wine lies naked — every weakness in the base wine, every imbalance in the acidity becomes mercilessly audible. Sugar in Champagne is what Photoshop is in photography: it can conceal, smooth, make more pleasing. Those who forgo it must work with what the vineyard and the vintage provide.
Mélanie Tarlant put it thus: „Dosage disturbs the message of the terroir.“ It’s a statement that fits the family’s working philosophy — at Tarlant in Œuilly, single vineyards, late disgorgement and minimal or zero dosage have been the standard for years. Most producers on lebendigeweine.de work in the Extra Brut or Brut Nature range.
What Grower Champagnes Do Differently
The abbreviations on the label reveal more than any marketing text. RM stands for Récoltant-Manipulant: a grower who cultivates their own grapes and produces the wine themselves. NM stands for Négociant-Manipulant: a house that purchases grapes. The big names — Moët, Veuve Clicquot, Krug — are NMs. They strive for consistency. The RMs on lebendigeweine.de strive for expression.
In the cellar, this manifests in a series of decisions: barrel ageing instead of steel tanks, spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts instead of cultured yeasts, forgoing filtration and fining. The foundation is laid in the vineyard — De Sousa in Avize works biodynamically with horses, as does Marguet in Ambonnay. Jérôme Blin in Vincelles and Solemme on the Montagne de Reims farm organically.
The single-vineyard bottlings, the solera reserve wines, the barrel ageing, the biodynamics, the absence of dosage — all of these are not isolated individual measures. Together they form a coherent picture: Champagne that shows a place rather than a brand. The Méthode Champenoise is the same for all producers — the same eight steps, the same second fermentation in the bottle. But what the growers make of it is radically different. And therein lies the argument for grower Champagne: not in the method, but in the attitude.