What does “remuage” mean in wine?
One of the more than eight steps used to turn a still wine into a sparkling one is deriding, or riddling in French. The riddling occurs towards the end of methods Champenoise or traditional method of making champagne, and it is the process of periodically rotating a bottle a quarter turn while simultaneously tilting it until it is upside down. This movement causes the sediment that accumulates inside the bottle to slide towards the neck. The subsequent removal of these particles, called disgorging, leaves the wine looking clear instead of cloudy.
Cloudy sparkling wine to drink is not a health problem, but Madame Clicquot, the eponymous widow of Veuve Clicquot, believed that champagne would become more marketable and sell better if there was an effective way to remove sediment and to make the wine clear.
Clicquot’s solution was to drill holes in a table at varying angles so that the bottles could remain stable when turned. This special table would later become known as the desk, which facilitated the riddling system. A stirrer (bottle turners) could turn 20,000 to 75,000 bottles a day, but this noble skill came at a considerable cost.
“Hand riddling is a very laborious step in the sparkling winemaking process,” says Ana Diogo-Draper, director of winemaking at Artesa in Napa. “It can take up to six weeks to complete manual riddling of a bottle of sparkling wine.”
In the 1970s, an invention called the gyropalette sought to alleviate labor costs by automating the riddling process.
“The gyropalettes can screen around the clock and complete a screening cycle in about seven days, depending on the amount of sediment in the bottle,” says Diogo-Draper.
And, unlike manual riddling, a machine doesn’t need vacations, sick days, or sleep.
Is there a difference in quality between wines that have been screened using a gyropalette versus manually?
“Ridging by hand is an art, of course, and it is the most traditional method,” explains Jean-Charles Boisset, president and founder of the Collection Boisset. “However, we believe that automated riddling does not necessarily mean a loss of quality in a wine.”
Zak Miller, sparkling winemaker at Domaine Carneros, notes that another advantage of automated riddling is that “a [gyropalette] the rack contains 504 bottles, and they are all consistent and screened identically. This riddling schedule is repeated so that all bottles have been screened in exactly the same way, minimizing variation. »
The consistency, efficiency and lower cost of automated riddling has refined the sparkling winemaking process. It is unsurprisingly widely adopted by contemporary producers.
“The technique of riddling by hand is less and less common, especially since there are few people left who have the skill, and it is no longer really transmitted from generation to generation”, explains Rémi Cohen, CEO of Domaine Carneros. “It’s not the most ergonomic practice, so you need someone skilled in practice.”
Of course, there are some exceptions.
“Some Champagne and sparkling wine houses continue to hand over small batches or portions of their sparkling to celebrate the old technique,” he says. “I’m sure they appreciate the skill and hands-on dedication that goes into this craft, but the vast majority of traditional method sparkling wines use gyropalettes these days.
Posted May 10, 2022