The first step in sparkling wine making is choosing the right section of the vineyard. The area must be suitable to grow grapes with such relatively high acidity that would make a wine of good acid composition. It is important to time the harvest perfectly, so that the grapes would be intact and healthy, because any flaws in the wine are intensified later by the carbon dioxide.
So the harvest should be timed in a way that the grapes would make a wine of at least 8-9 g/l, or even 10-12 g/l acid content and 10.5-11.5 %vol. alcohol content. The grapes must be harvested when they are ripe in a technological sense, meaning they must be a bit premature, but not unripe.
The grapes must be processed quickly and gently, to avoid oxidation and to preserve the primary aromas of the grapes.
The base wine fermentation technology is similar to that of white wines: reductive, controlled fermentation at 12-14 °C.
Blending: wines made of different varieties are blended (mixed) proportionately in such a way that allows us to manufacture sparkling wines of the same features every year, and to balance the differences between vintages.
Vintage Sparkling Wine: Sparkling wine of a certain vintage.
Prestige cuvée: The best cuvée of a certain sparkling wine cellar.
Varieties especially suitable for making sparkling wine base wine:
- Chardonnay
- Pinot Noir
- Pinot Meunier
- Pinot Grigio
- Zöldveltelini
- Riesling.
For Asti type sparkling wines muscat varieties are used.
