Video: How is Champagne Made?

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How champagne is made; learn more about champagne in this free instructional video.

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Video Transcript

I'm at Jacksontrigs winery with chief wine maker Marco pickoldy. What we are looking at now is a shaking table and salting table which are two very important tools to perform and to maintain the quality of the grapes from the vineyard. In the vineyard we pick the grapes by hand and we put them in baskets of fifteen to twenty kilos each this is very important because in this way the grapes are not going to be squeezed by their own weight. The grapes arrive here, the boxes arrive here and one of our guys dumps slowly the grapes onto the shaking table. This shaking table pushes the grapes in this direction under this fan. The fan is useful to remove all kinds of water or juice from the grapes, and to remove everything is all the wet and the dew that we can have from the grapes at this point. The juice and that water are collected in this tray and after will be disposed. At this point is where the real salting happens. The grapes gently fall on this salting table, this belt that is going toward that direction. Then the people here remove all the damaged grapes, the damaged berries actually, not the grapes, they literally remove berry by berry, leaves, and other kind of residue that can come from the vineyard. So in this way we have the pure, healthy and clean fruit. The fruit at this point will fall inside the container, a bin that is posed underneath the salting table and gently put inside this conveyor that moves everything, transports everything, inside a press. That press, is very, very technically nice and advanced, because this gives me the tool to press the grapes at the proper pressure. It is very important you don't over-press the grapes. In the way,