Making our Sparkling Wines
“We take pride in our process, and we’re always thrilled when we get questions about how we make our wine. Here’s an insight into all the steps that go into making our award-winning English vintage sparkling wines.”
Picking and Pressing
Harvest time is when the collaboration of the grower to winemaker starts in earnest and in the run up to harvest time, the team will walk through the vineyard together tasting and testing the grapes. We pick whole bunches of grapes which are then sent to the winery in shallow crates so we don’t put too much pressure on the fruit. We aim to pick at the optimum time, when the grapes are perfectly ripe and sugar levels are at their best.
We press the grapes as delicately as possible, so as to not spoil the juice. The first free-run juice, called the ‘cuvee’, is considered the best quality, and we use this for our wines.
First Fermentation
Fermentation takes place mainly in stainless steel tanks, but sometimes in oak barrels. In some years we soften the wine using a process called malolactic fermentation turning malic acids into milky lactic acids. This process also reduces the wine’s acidity.
The first fermentation gives us our base wine which is high in acid and usually quite clean in flavour.
Creating the best English wines
Artelium specialises in vintage wines, which means we only use wine from a particular year to make our wines. The challenge to our experienced winemakers is to predict the flavour of the blend once it has gone through a second fermentation and the process of ageing on its lees.
Second Fermentation
At Artelium, we use a traditional method of winemaking which means bottling the wine with yeast to encourage a second fermentation. The CO2 produced during this process gives us those all important bubbles. Once complete, we leave the wine to age on its lees for a minimum of four years.
Riddling
After 4 years, we bring the wine out of its slumber and start to test the wine again. However, after a long time on the lees, the yeast has collected at the bottom side of the bottle. We then riddle the wine by slowly and carefully turning our bottles of sparkling wine ‘sur pointe’ or upside down. In years gone by we’d have done this by hand, turning a small degree each day, but it’s now a mechanised process, with the riddling cages slowly turning the bottle upside down over the course of a week.
Disgorgement
We freeze the neck of the bottles in a brine solution to create a plug of yeast and ice. We then take off the crown cap and the bubbles force the ice plug containing the yeast out. We then top the wine back up and put the cork in and the cage on. The result should be a well-balanced and integrated wine aged over a number of years.
About Artelium
We’re an artisanal wine producer based in the Sussex countryside, where we create fine English wines using traditional methods. We love sharing our award-winning wine and the land that makes it so special, through our vineyard tours and tastings - or have some delivered to your door from our online wine shop.