How Champagne is made

Champagne follows the traditional method, with three additions that define its character: blending across villages and years, extended lees ageing, and dosage.

The base wine is deliberately austere — high in acid, low in alcohol — because that is what a good sparkling base requires, not because the region cannot ripen fruit.

Most Champagne is non-vintage, blended with reserve wines from previous years to hold a consistent house style. The blend is the product.

Minimum lees ageing is set by regulation, and better houses substantially exceed it.

The traditional method puts the second fermentation inside a sealed bottle, so the carbon dioxide it produces has nowhere to escape and dissolves into the wine. Everything else about the process follows from that one constraint.

It begins with base wine that is deliberately thin, high in acidity and low in alcohol — around 10–11%. That would be an unattractive still wine and is exactly the right starting point, which is why the method arose in a marginal cool climate rather than a warm one.

A liqueur de tirage of sugar and yeast is added, the bottle is sealed with a crown cap, and the second fermentation raises the alcohol by about 1.2% and builds around six atmospheres of pressure.

The wine then rests on its lees for a legally specified minimum — fifteen months for non-vintage Champagne, three years for vintage — during which autolysis produces the bready, biscuity character that distinguishes the method.

Riddling gradually moves the sediment into the neck. The neck is then frozen, the cap removed, and the plug of ice and lees ejected by the internal pressure — dégorgement. The small loss is topped up with the dosage, a wine-and-sugar solution that sets the final sweetness.

Dosage is where Brut, Extra Brut and Brut Nature are decided, and it is added at the very end. A wine can be identical up to that point and finish anywhere on the sweetness scale.