Presses and Bin Cleaning
The routine's properly kicked in now. We arrive somewhere between eight and half eight most mornings, and the first job is always taking apart the two and four tonne cages and cleaning everything with a water blaster. Berries, seeds and stalks all need to be washed away, ready for the day, since they've had juice and pressings sitting in them overnight, too late in the day before to clean them then, so it waits till morning. Tom and I worked alongside each other, mostly upstairs in charge of the presses.
By around eleven the first load of berries has come in, either from the vineyards through contractors or from Marc Chauvet's own fruit, and it goes into the press.
Loading it up is called charging the press here in Champagne, and it happens fast. As the berries hit the bottom the juice starts leaking out straight away, and that first bit that comes off is called the first run juice. This juice doesn't get used to make quality house Champagne, it gets put aside and used in a lower quality champagne.
The goal is always to get the presses loaded as quickly as possible, and there's usually two or three loads through in a day. It's processing the juice as it comes through and cleaning up, and once that's done it's lunchtime and everyone sits down together. Then the whole cycle starts again, emptying the presses, clearing out the skins and seeds, and loading up as fast as possible to get the next load through. Tom and I worked well on this level cleaning the presses, taking them apart every wash and putting them back together with a water blaster, then washing the crates and bins in the crate wash. What a genius machine, so fast to get this clean.
Once the first load's in, that's when we sit down for champagne, normally about half eleven. This morning we had leftover cheese pie. I never really knew cheese pie was a thing.
What's been interesting is noticing how the sounds have gone from foreign to familiar these last few days. The elevator bringing the grapes up, the doors opening, that drain running continuously down in the winery that sounds exactly like a tank leaking even though I know full well it isn't. All of it felt strange at the start and now it's just the soundtrack of the day.
There are four levels here at Marc Chauvet, the top floor where the contractors bring the fruit in, then the winery itself where all the pressing happens, then the riddling room, then right down at the bottom the cave, which is genuinely spectacular, one of the most beautiful spaces I've been in.
The pranks were on and I got caught out again by another one. Tom, who's Jules's cousin, and I were working alongside the presses washing crates, the crate washer sits right in between them. It was after lunch, we'd just gone up to clean the crates, and someone turned all the water washers towards me. I turned the machine on and got absolutely drenched. Quite hilarious, and just the nature of vintage really.