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).
Mary Stuart, by name Mary, Queen of Scots, is certainly a woman who left her mark on the medieval period. She became Queen Consort of France following her husband’s accession to the throne as King Francis II (if only for a few months) and is known to have stayed in Reims with her aunt Renata of Lorraine, Abbess of Saint-Pierre-les-Dames in Reims. Hence, perhaps the name of this House, founded in 1867 and now part of the Groupe Thiénot.
The Champagne Houses