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 monthHarvesting 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).
In 1912 winegrower’s son Henri Lhopital decided to create his own Champagne House. In 1952 his own son André devised the brand name “J. de Telmont”, taking inspiration from a particular vineyard plot and adopting the motto, Nec Pluribus Impar (rarely matched). In 2020 André’s grandchildren sold their majority stake to Rémy Cointreau, marking that group’s comeback in Champagne.
The Champagne Houses