Riddling and Sabrage
By the time I got down to riddling, harvest had already wrapped, and there was something almost meditative about the change in pace. Riddling down in the cave was almost mesmerising. Twisting three bottles at a time you get into a rhythm, and it's almost therapeutic doing this by hand. It's not the most glamorous work, but that doesn't mean it isn't rewarding, you come away with a real sense of purpose and grubby hands. If you think about Champagne, you have to think about the whole process, and how "growers" don't cut any corners.
There's something quite calming about being down underground. The cave has this incredible atmosphere, cool and quiet and completely still. Riddling takes about three weeks all up before the bottles are ready to move into disgorgement, so it's slow work and there's no rushing it. You just turn, and wait, and turn again.
Riddling is the process that gets rid of the cloudy sediment from the second fermentation, the leftover yeast that happens inside the bottle. Each bottle gets given a three-quarter turn, repeated every day for three weeks, and tilted a bit more upright each day until eventually it's sitting completely upside down. It's a technique that goes back to the early eighteen hundreds, invented by Madame Clicquot. Marc Chauvet still does it properly by hand, which is why I ended up down there turning bottles. Bigger producers these days use gyropalettes instead, these big mechanical cages that hold hundreds of bottles at once and do the whole job automatically in a fraction of the time.
It actually surprised me to find one of these in Rilly-la-Montagne. Philippe, who I did the sabrage with, has one, and he turned it on for me. It sounded like something out of an operating theatre.
I am now part of the brotherhood of sabrage. Philippe, who is part of a proper sabrage brotherhood, walked me through the induction ceremony, opening with a big "Voilà!" before launching into a speech in French that felt like it had been said a thousand times before and still meant something every time.
"Cher ami, tu viens de faire le premier geste que notre confrérie t'apporte." Dear friend, you have just made the first gesture that our brotherhood brings you.
"Au nom de Noé, père de la vigne, et de Saint Vincent, patron des vignerons..." In the name of Noah, father of the vine, and of Saint Vincent, patron saint of winegrowers.
"Noblement, vous avez séparé le bouchon du flacon qui emprisonne le merveilleux vin de Champagne." Nobly, you have separated the cork from the bottle that imprisons the wonderful wine of Champagne.
There's one more line to the speech, something about being properly knighted into the brotherhood of the sabre, but I need to go back and watch the video again to get the wording right, so that bit is still to come.
Two very different days, but they've both stuck with me for life. One was all stillness and patience, three weeks of turning bottles nobody sees. The other was ceremony and theatre and a two hundred year old French tradition delivered with total sincerity in the middle of a cellar. That's Champagne for you really, the quiet and the spectacle sitting right next to each other.
Thought of the day: Champagne asks for patience in one room and puts on a show in the next, and somehow both of those things are just as real as each other.