Wine Diary
Filling – Riddling & Disgorging
All the time for Bründlmayer Brut
At present we focus our attention on sparkling wine production! Producing “sparkling wine” comprises a wide array of tasks from the tending of the vines to the fine bubbles in the glass, over a period of often many years! Each step requires skilled hands, planning and deep concentration. In this regard, even in times of the pandemic we are not inclined to change the working schedule in the winery & vineyard significantly.
While in the vineyards green work is getting increasingly challenging due to this week’s blessing of rainfalls, our people in the cellar are filling the new base wine for our future Bründlmayer Brut Rosé Reserve. This new batch will hopefully please our customers in about two years’ time. Simultaneously, in our new “riddling house" Bründlmayer Brut Rosé bottles on the racks have to be “moved”: after a ripening period of around 18 months they are now undergoing the process of riddling (remuage) the lees into the bottleneck. After this is accomplished, they will be stocked upside down (sur point) one floor below.
And last but not least we are also “disgorging” Brut in a separate room of our cellar: this quite martial expression gets its roots from the French word “dégorger”, and more than hints at the fact that all those wonderful Imperials, Magnums, Jeroboams and Methusalems in former days frequently and literally “risked their necks” to the pleasure of the guests. Whoever has already stood in front, or better besides a traditional Sommelier and watched the process of “sabrage” i.e. actually cracking open a bottle by a skilled blow along the bottle neck and against the cork rim, thus “beheading” the bottle, knows that the expression is not really excessive.
At Bründlmayer everything runs more peacefully. Crown cork and the plug of icy yeast are removed with precision by our disgorging machine without harming the glass neck. A bit of dosage will be added and the bottle topped with a small proportion of an earlier disgorged Sekt, before it will be corked and finally secured by the “agraffe” (a small wire basket). After Disgorgement our Brut will have to rest for a view more months before labeling (with the disgorgement date imprinted on the back label) and its ultimate release in an early state of ripeness.
Our friends in Austria can currently order Bründlmayer Brut Rose Reserve of the October 2019 disgorgement in our shop fresh from our cellar.