
Champagne has just finished its three weeks of harvesting throughout the region. Harvesting takes place 100 days after the grape flower and usually lasts 10 days, so it generally falls in September. However, the unusually wet weather this year prompted a cautious harvest with a lower yield – making it among one of the smaller harvests of Champagne.
Key steps in the pressing process
Sustainable viticulture
These days, viticulture is much more than grapes. It’s also about understanding and preserving the environment. At SimplyChampagne, we care for sustainable production and products. For Champagne, this starts, of course, in the vineyards. But it keeps going until the wine fabrication. Cage washing is compulsory after each press load. As part of the commitment to sustainable viticulture, solid residues that remain after pressing (aignes) are sent for distillation, and winery waste water (used for cleaning in the course of pressing) is recycled and treated so as to avoid any risk of environmental pollution.
Did you know?
Once the grape is cut manually, as is the tradition in Champagne, each harvester harvests around 3,000 grape stacks daily, amounting to roughly 300 to 400kg of grapes. It takes 1-1.2 kg of grapes to make one 750 ml bottle of Champagne.
Did you know?
Rosé Champagne is made using two different processes.
One is by maceration: leaving destalked black-skinned grapes to macerate in a tank prior to pressing until the desired colour is achieved (24-72 hours).
The other is by assembling white Champagne with red wines from the Champagne region (Coteaux Champenois). The Champagne region is the only region authorized to use this second method.