Ageing sur lies

Time is probably the most important ingredient in a high-quality wine. This is all the more true in sparkling wine production. Each wine receives storage "sur lies" of about 12 months. This is the time it needs to finish the fermentation and also to carry out the malolactic fermentation. The wine remains on the lees without racking, as it went into fermentation and is not stirred. Only from time to time the barrels are filled to compensate for evaporation and to protect the wine from oxidation.

For the vinification we use 90% used wooden barrels and only for small lots, which are not large enough to fill a barrel, the wines are stored in stainless steel tanks. There they stay just as long until the wines of the following year come into the cellar to be processed into sparkling wine.

Then the individual parts are blended together, in Champagne one speaks of "marriage". The different batches together should result in a balanced, complex and at the same time slim base wine, which can then go through the second fermentation.