The Champagne Making

The Pressing

The extraction of the juice
It is because the champagne is a white wine exit for some of black grapes which one must take of the precautions: one must make so that the colouring matters contained in the skin does not try the wine. Pressing is characterized by its speed, to avoid to the maximum the contact between the skin and the juice, by its absence of brutality in order not to make burst bays, by its progressiveness which allows a regular flow of the juice.
This technique will make it possible to extract from musts most of the tanins, of the bitter principles and the coarse perfumes localised in the film and the zone of pulp close to the pips.

The fractionation of the juice
In spite of the precautions taken during pressing, the influence of the skin and the pips have a growing influence on the juice, whose quality decreases gradually.
One then will split musts in two distinct parts; each category corresponds to a juice with specific intrasèques qualities :


 vintage : who is a juice which appears by its freshness and especially a large smoothness This juice is the first which runs out when one presses the grape for a pressing of 4000 kg grapes one will obtain 20.5 Hl of vintage.
 size : extracted after having collected the 25 Hl of vintage is the juice. Those are less fine and less noble than the vintage but bring a complement necessary when the assembly is made.
This juice remained more longrtemps in contact with the skins confers more scented odor and more developed savour to him. They bring certain fruity thus but are much more sensitive to the phenomena of oxidation.