Pops’ Napa Travel Guide, Domaine Chandon

 

 

I have said before that if you have been on one winery tour you have been on them all. It’s better and more expedient if you just go to the tasting room. That isn’t true for sparkling wine. On my first visit to Domaine Chandon I learned a lot about sparkling wine production.

First of all, if there is not a vintage on the label then the wine is a blend of different years. They do that so the wine tastes pretty much the same year after year. Next, the secondary fermentation that produces the bubbles also produces sediment that needs to be extracted from the wine. To do that is a process called riddling. Riddling is where the bottles are kept at an angle and rotated slightly at a specific interval. There used to be and in some cases still is a job called a riddler who rotates every bottle. This slides the sediment up the neck of the bottle gently for easy extraction. If you ever bought a bottle of sparkling wine and found a painted line on the bottom of the bottle it is there to show the riddler which bottles have been rotated. In modern times there is a machine that will do the riddling but there are some still done the manual way.

Now for the cool part. I saw this at Chandon and never knew they did this. After the sediment is all in the bottle neck, the bottles were put in a vat of liquid nitrogen with only the neck in the vat. This froze the wine in the bottle neck where all the sediment was. Then they popped the bottle cap off and the pressure in the bottle shot the ice plug out. The sediment shot out in the ice plug. They then topped the bottle off with more wine and immediately put the cork in.  If you have never seen the production of sparkling wine you should.

If you noticed I always said sparkling wine and not Champagne. That is because only wine from the Champagne region of France can be called Champagne. All sparkling wine from other countries or regions are considered to be made in the methode champenoise.

 

Domaine Chandon is located in Napa Valley in the town of Yountville. As you are driving north it is on the left next to the Veterans Home. Domaine Chandon is a French owned winery. I would highly recommend stopping there. The grounds are beautiful; they have a great tasting room and a world class restaurant, Etoile. Take the tour and you will not only learn the wine making process but also the history of sparkling wine.