Top of the bottle: a year at an English vineyard

Of course, growing great grapes is only half the process – actually making the wine requires an immense amount of knowledge and skill. Cherie and the team at Nyetimber utilise something called the Traditional Method (originally called méthode champenoise) to make award-winning wine. ‘It’s an EU-regulated term which has been used in Champagne for decades,’ says Cherie. ‘You have to pick the grapes by hand, which is important as you can be more gentle with the fruit. There are some very good picking machines out there but they’re not quite good enough and some of the grapes end up bruised. After that we press the fruit, stems and all, and collect all the juice. Then we add yeast and leave it to ferment from anywhere between seven and twenty-one days, which usually happens in October and November.

‘At the end of fermentation the wine is cloudy and needs to be left to develop and settle a little – usually until January,’ she continues. ‘At that stage we have what we call base wine. It doesn’t have any bubbles and tastes like a light white wine with a lower alcohol content, less flavour and more acidity. So far, the process sounds similar to standard wine production, but it’s towards the end of the process that things get interesting. We then take that wine and mix it with yeast and sugar, fill it into glass bottles and seal it with a crown cap. The yeast eats the sugar, converts it into alcohol and gives off carbon dioxide as a by-product. Because the bottle is sealed, there’s nowhere for the CO2 to go and that’s how the bubbles are formed.’

As the yeast creates alcohol and bubbles, it leaves behind sediment; however when you buy a bottle of sparkling wine, it’s crystal clear. How winemakers following the Traditional Method remove this leftover yeast is brilliantly simple. ‘After aging the bottles with yeast, we need to go through two more processes, called riddling and disgorging,’ explains Cherie. ‘Riddling is a simple action where you basically turn the bottles upside down so all the sediment and yeast collects in the neck at the bottom. You then take the bottles and dip them into a freezing solution, so the yeasty liquid in the neck turns into a solid ice plug. Then it’s time for disgorging; once you turn the bottle over and remove the cap, the pressure in the bottle pushes the ice plug out and you’re left with perfectly clear wine underneath. You then reseal the bottles with a cork, add all the labels and the wine is ready to be aged.’

The wine will continue to age and develop in the bottle, eventually becoming one of five types of wine made by Nyetimber; Classic Cuvee, Blanc de Blancs, Tillington Single Vineyard, Rosé and Demi-Sec. For Cherie, however, there’s no time to sit down and relax with a glass or two – it has taken a full year, from growing the grapes to pushing the corks in, for the wine to be made, so at that point she’s checking and pruning the vines ready for the next harvest.