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
Harvesting in Champagne is an entirely manual process, selecting whole, undamaged clusters that must remain that way right up to the point of pressing. This is essential to avoid staining the musts, bearing in mind that 70% of Champagne wines are made from black grapes.
The actual start of picking varies with each producer but cannot commence before the date fixed by the Comité Champagne on the basis of reference values established for each vine parcel and grape variety, using the hundreds of thousands of samples collected by the"Réseau Matu"(Ripening Observation Network).
He was a cooper, she was a winegrower’s daughter. Out of their marriage was born Champagne Canard-Duchêne – the Champagne House established in 1868 by Victor Canard and Léonie Duchêne in their home village of Ludes. Perched on a hillside on the Montagne de Reims, the Canard-Duchêne Champagne House now stands as a fine tribute to their efforts.
The Champagne Houses
