The harvests intended to produce Crémant d’Alsace must be manual to pick whole bunches. The must then be transported to the cellar without having them crushed.
Pressing is done using whole bunches, without crushing or stripping.
After the pressing of the grapes, the juice, called must is stored in the vat depending on the varieties and initial parcels.
After a period of 12 to 14 months, the impurities (stems, berry skins, seeds) called bourbe lie at the bottom of the vat. Then there is the settling of the must process which consists of removing these impurities, either in a static or mechanical manner. The must is then pumped towards the fermentation vat.
The vinification of Crémant d’Alsace starts with a first alcoholic fermentation. Thanks to the natural yeasts or from adding specific yeasts, the grape sugars will change into alcohol and transform the must into wine.
This operation is the first transformation of still wine into sparkling wine and can only be done after January 1 of the year following the harvest. It consists of adding a liqueur de tirage wine made of sugar of yeast to cause a second fermentation. The wine is then placed in its final bottle, capped and stored away in the cellar.
Adding the liqueur de tirage (still wine, sugar and yeast) will cause a second fermentation called bottle fermentation. The sparkling quality depends on the latter. This takes place in closed and horizontally-laid bottles to facilitate the exchanges between wine and yeast. For good bottle fermentation, it’s essential that this process takes place slowly usually for a minimum of 9 months.
After the rack-ageing period (laid-down), the bottles are placed upside down on riddling racks or mechanical stirrers. They are turned daily on their ends either manually or mechanically to concentrate the inactive yeasts in the neck.
The evacuation of deposit made from the yeasts is called disgorging. During this operation, the bottle necks are brought to freezing temperature to form an artificial cork which will be evacuated using the pressure from carbon dioxide contained in the wine. This lost volume is replaced by adding specific dosages of expedition liqueur made of wine and often sugar which, depending on the doses, will make very dry, dry or semi-dry Crémant d’Alsace.
After disgorging, the caps are replaced by definitive cork reserved for Crémants and a wire hood.
With the aim of allowing wines to age more, the bottles are kept a little longer in the cellars before being sold. As there is an obligatory minimum of 12 months between the filling and the selling.
The Crémant d’Alsace is bottled.