Champagne holds its breath until the Saints de Glace (Ice Saints) are safely past (11, 12, 13 May), dreading a spring freeze that might destroy the future harvest’s fruitful buds.
Desuckering removes the non-fruitful buds (suckers or gourmands). Any unwanted growth is removed to optimise sugar concentration and encourage good sap flow.
The Champagne month by month
In good years, those wines produced in excess of the cap set for each harvest are set aside for release in the event of a future harvest shortfall. Known as the “inter-professional Champagne wine reserve”, these reserve stocks represent a particularly ingenious solution to the problem of meeting market demand in good and bad years alike, with no loss of quality.
Viscount Florens de Castellane founded his House in Epernay in 1895. A descendant of one of the oldest families in France, he chose to adorn his bottles with the red cross of Saint Andrew – a heraldic symbol that pays homage to the oldest military regiment in Champagne.
The Champagne Houses
