Wine storehouses of champagne back to the source

France Champagne

Wine storehouses of Champagne
back to the source?

Maturing Champagne in wood, the Great Houses did that already fifty years ago…
Some, like Alfred Gratien, Bollinger or Krug continue this tradition with pride: it made their reputation!
Other, like Billecart-Salmon, are returning to it “not to use, as in times gone by, vats and barrels like vulgar containers, but to make a true vinification in the wood” specify Antoine and François Roland-Billecart.
The idea to design a wine storehouse using wood matured with the development of the Clos Saint Hilaire, a Blanc de Noirs millésime 1995, single-plot, single-vintage, which had a great success as of its marketing in 2005. The family then wanted to work out other millésimes by using the same process. The barrels multiplying and passing from 15 to 440 today, a place had to be found to store them. An unutilised storeroom, on the pavement of the Champagne House in Mareuil sur Aÿ, was reallocated and refitted as a wine storehouse at the end of 2009. But to succeed in keeping Champagne on the fruit and of a great freshness, all the while maturing them in wood was a technical gamble as the two brothers explain. Nothing was left at random. “The vintage must be of excellent quality (2011 for example will not be a millésime or the Clos Saint Hilaire). The barrels should not be too new because we do not seek content of tannins, but from the barrels of 3rd or 4th wines, having contained Chardonnay from Burgundy, the exchange with the wood happens without being too marked”. The walls covered with lime, chalk and clay are thermically insulated.

Antoine et François Roland Billecart avec Alexandre Bader dans le nouveau chai

The temperature of the wine storehouse is of 11° on average, the ambient hygrothermy oscillates between 75 and 80%. And the Sirius demineralized water atomizer avoids damping and drying of barrels. The latter are easily recognizable and have clear signs of traceability: a silver or golden grid depending on the cuvée. They are aligned in straight rows, like classical dancers at the bar, under a visible joist framing and bathed in the light of giant lanterns.
All these efforts are authorized because the House seeks to obtain vanilla flavours, spicy notes, and toasted aromas, in addition to the fruit. The cuvée Brut Sous Bois, composed of the three different Champagne varietals and three millésimes 2005-6-7 is its most beautiful expression, “it revives the know-how of original Champagne”!

Marie-Caroline Bourrellis

The Moët & Chandon Cuverie of Mont Aigu

At the foot of the Mont Aigu lodge, an emblematic place of Champagne, near its centre of pressing of Oiry, Moet & Chandon built a fermenting room, answering to the evolution of its sales and also to partly store its reserve wines. Additional to that of Epernay, it will be ready for use for the pickin in 2012. The famous House equips itself with an innovating, respectful environmental friendly production tool, a pilot site for oenology!

This cuverie, monumental by its dimensions (120 m in length by 50m in width and 11 m in height, that is 6.000sqm on the whole) and its capacity 150,000 hectolitres (100,000 in 2012), is ideally situated in the landscape. It is 2/3 buried. The access for the visitors is at seven meters in height and the visit is carried out by gangways at the edges of the building, always on the same plan. Its architecture, signed Giovanni Pace, is really minimalistic. The base is out of concrete, the frame is metallic, and the walls are out of glass, without any obvious supporting structure to divert ones attention. Here the relationship of the inside to the outside is very strong. This building has a view on the vineyard and puts forward 137 half-sunken stainless steel tanks which take on; in this context, a glowing air of works of art.
Landscape integration, aestheticism … a step towards durable development, Moët & Chandon placed the totality of its sites under the sign of ISO 14001 certification. The cuverie of Mont Aigu does not make an exception and goes even further: it is also certified high environmental quality HEQ.

With Mont Aigu, waste is managed, the building consumes little water and energy (it recovers rainwater), the materials used have a strong technical inertia, acoustic and visual comfort is the subject of study for the users.
Lastly, as Richard Geoffroy, director of the oenology department (80 people) explains: “This new cuverie is a pilot site for oenology, and certain developments could be transferred to that of Epernay”. Fermentations are guided by using sensors fixed on the tanks so that they develop in the most regular possible way (it is a factor of quality). The movements of musts and wines are carried out by automatism using electromagnetic sluice gates managed remotely with a great advantage in terms of traceability, hygiene and safety. Oxygen is the enemy of wine; here it is controlled by the systems of deoxyge-nating and inertia (nitrogen for the partially filled tanks). All the systems are in fixed places, managed automatically, and under constant control.
A laboratory is also set up nearby, to do the analyses on the spot. In the centre of the cuverie a workspace is created where the apparatuses for clarification, centrifugation, and treatment by cold are stored near the two assembly tanks of 6,000 hectolitres that are being built on site.
“This cuverie has a global management system, indicates Richard Geoffroy, but we have the means to individually treat with an extreme attention each tank. It is a true progress in the develop­ment of Champagne. This installation puts the technique at the service of the ambition of the famous House. To produce wines of a great generosity and a beautiful shine cannot be done without a deep control of their elaboration!”
“This new realization consolidates Moet & Chandon in the length beforehand which characterizes it for a long time!” concludes its new president, Stéphane Baschiera.

Marie-Caroline Bourrellis

Moët & Chandon
www.moet.com

Cuverie du Mont Aigu