Professor Natty gets fizzical
A new series where you can ask Professor Natty (neither a professor nor well-dressed) any wine-related question you care to, and he will attempt to give his considered opinion on the issues raised.
Dear Professor Natty,
How can you call champagnes natural wines when the second fermentation is a highly manipulative one using liqueur de tirage?
Yes, the involved and manipulative procedure for the pesky creation of bubbles might be seen to invalidate the purity of the concept of naturalness, but, as with anything, if we define our terms, we can assert that some champagnes are made with fewer corrective interventions than others and may be considered truer to the overall spirit of natural wine. It is interesting that such champagnes also bridge the divide between more classic restaurant lists and those found in natural wine bars and in both types of establishment are often referred to as “artisan grower champagnes”.
In the literal sense, any description of winemaking that includes “method” in the title, indicates one form of intervention or another. Champagne method is the most obvious with the highest number and degree of interventions. Ancestral method is softer and more subtle in nature, whilst pet nat involves a pause in a natural process of fermentation. Transformations are occurring; it is a question of how they are enabled or made to occur.
When it comes to bulk-production champagne, grapes are usually sourced from a variety of different growers and different vineyards with no strict overarching farming standards. Unlike still winemaking where the wine stands or falls on the quality of the grapes, the number and degree of manipulations allowed in the production of champagne-method sparkling allows the winemaker to cover any deficiencies in the base wine. Farming is usually conventional (champagne has been one of the slowest adopters of organic farming in the whole of France), yields generally high, grapes being a means to a bubbly end. An artisan producer will use grapes from vineyards that they have farmed sustainably at least, organically or biodynamically at best. Since the objective is not to create an identikit autolytic champagne forged from a combination of yeasts, sugars and blending, good farming is paramount in allowing one to harvest on maturity and with material in the grapes. Rather than seek to create a style that is the same year on year, an artisan vigneron will often try to express how the grape grows in the particular soil in the particular vineyard.
As with natural still wines, the (first) fermentation for natural sparkling wine should occur using indigenous yeasts. Now to the secondary fermentation and the main manipulation which is initiated by the addition of liqueur de tirage (a solution of dried yeast, wine and sugar).
These days the addition of the liqueur de tirage is precisely calculated to produce an increase in pressure of 6 kg/cm2 by the end of fermentation. This corresponds to 24 grams of sugar per litre of blended wine, using a dose containing 500-625 grams of sugar (rock candy) per litre.
The liquid yeast cultures in the liqueur de tirage must include one of the three strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae used in primary alcoholic fermentation — specially selected strains of dry yeast, with particular organoleptic qualities plus the ability to trigger the prise de mousse.
The yeasts are brought back to life in a mixture of still wine, water, sugar and diammonium phosphate. The wine serves to feed the yeast while the water, present in very small quantities, prevents the alcohol level from exceeding 11°-12°. The sugar meanwhile provides a source of carbon and fermentable matter, and the diammonium phosphate provides the nitrates necessary for cell growth.
To encourage yeast activity, the winemaker uses state-of-the art technology: fermenting bins, equipped with powerful mixing paddles, temperature control and oxygen injection systems.
And all this is excluding any mention of probably additions of enzymes, clarification and stabilisation agents and sulphites.
Not what we might describe as very “natural.”
Since sparkling wine is what it is, there are no natural ways of generating a second fermentation. It seems as if might be possible to use a pied de cuve culture to assist the process, and in general, select and culture vineyard yeasts to create a must, rather than buy in neutral dried champagne yeasts. A few producers work this way.
In 2017 in Penedes, the Recaredo estate took a step towards the concept of terroir sparkling wines by opting to make all its Corpinnat wines using organic must for the second fermentation in the bottle. The winery had been progressively switched from organic refined cane sugar to must from its own vineyards or organic rectified concentrated must for this stage of the winemaking process.
So, what are the minimum requirements for a more natural style of champagne?
- Organic & biodynamic farming – a prerequisite for all natural wines
- Low yields/hand harvest – hand selection of grapes on the basis of their maturity
- Focus on vintages rather than create a house style*
- Parcel vinification to show terroir (not a requisite)
- Ferment of base wine for champagne done with native yeasts or pied de cuvee
- Use of an own yeast culture to make the base for the tirage rather than commercially cultured yeast plus cane sugar combination
- Zero dosage (brut nature) after disgorgement
- Minimal sulphites (at pressing rather than before bottling)
It is impossible to be prescriptive. Blending is a part of any winemaking, and the majority of champagnes may be from different vineyards, and different vineyards (there is a vogue for reserve perpetuel and solera blending in the region amongst more adventurous producers). A lot of experimentation needs to be done before own yeast cultures are used. Champagne making is an art form; in the end, bringing nature in at the edges (through farming and reducing the number of additions) can be a benefit in that it allows the quality of the grapes to shine. When I drink my favourite artisan champagnes I feel that the wines are delicious in themselves, and the bubbles are merely a happy addition.
*
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