More champagne to be made

The still wine spends at least 15 months in these wooden boxes. Here it develops the bubbles and ages.

Champagne keeps itself economically more than floating - as opposed to the mainpart of the rest of the suffering, French wineworld. The sales of af champagne is just fine, which is why the semiofficial agency, the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC) - which balances as a sort of buffer between the winegrowers, the champagnehouses and the authorities, has decided to release a part of the reserves.

This means, that there will be produced chamapgne of an extra of 500 kilos of grapes per hectare on top of the ordinary quote of 11.500 kilos per hectare. The released bubbles however are not to be found on the shelves in shops straight away. They physical state at the moment is liquid in the form of still wine. Or to put it in another way, it must be turned into champagne first.

Still wine and then champagne
The stil wine will be blended (assemblage), poured into the bottle (tirage) and then put to age in the prescribed number of months and finally disgorged (See Corkchange) and dressed up nicely. At least 15 months for non-vintage champagne and at least three years for vintage champagne. Only then the distance to shops start to be counted in months or even weeks.

The deblockage - this is the technical term - follows the wake of good sales in 2005 and the anticipation of further good sales in another two or three years.

Last February a quantity of still wine of 1.000 kilos of grapes per hectare were released, so this year apparentlyt the CIVC has chosen a more careful line.

For us - for everybody that sells grapes - the release means a bit of extra money too.


The codes explain when the still wine was blended, bottled and how long it must age on the lees.

På dansk

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