It all started with the dream house
And then a lot of good old hard work
Robert and Michele Bowman had wanted to buy a home in Franschhoek for many years, but the right place which ticked all the boxes proved illusive. The properties were often too large, too remote or too small with not enough land. They were really looking for a character full old house with a large garden but close to the village.
The old Manor house at La Ferme Chantelle ticked all the boxes, a lovely old Victorian house with front and back stoeps and a large garden, close to the village . It came however with a winery and a vineyard and access to the grapes on the communal estate vineyard . As the house was ideal they bought it lock, stock and barrel and set about learning how to make wine, not just drink it!
How Chantelle Cap Classique is made
Essentially, wine making involves a lot of hard work, maintaining the vines throughout the year and making a lot of judgement calls. It’s these judgement calls that make a great wine. So the end product is the culmination of vine maintenance, the terroir and the wine maker’s skills.
Our grapes are harvested at a low sugar level content as the wine needs to go through two fermentation cycles. At Chantelle, we harvest our first grapes at 18 – 19 Balling, a measure of the sugar content of each grape, which equates to 180 – 190gr/L. This leads to fairly high acidity level of 9 – 12g/L. which contribute to the freshness of the bubbles as well as the longevity of the MCC.
We have a second, later harvest at Chantelle, when we pick a smaller quantity of grapes, which have ripened more on the vine. These grapes have higher sugars and lower acidity. This later harvest will be pressed and placed in old french oak barrels. We will then use this late harvest wine as a blending component to the earlier harvest, just before bottling.
Traditionally, MCC is made using Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grape varietals. We only use the Chardonnay varietal which allow us to call our MCC “Blanc de Blanc”. Once we have harvested the grapes, we press them at low pressure (500L/ton) without de-stemming. The bunches of grapes are placed whole into the pressoir and it’s unique feature is a shallow base that allows only a thin layer of grapes to be pressed. As a result, the juice does not come into significant contact with the skins and no colour is imparted, also avoiding tannin extraction. The juice will settle, getting rid of solids and the clean juice is drawn off and put in stainless steel vats, where a cultivated yeast is added. The wine is kept at 14 -16 degrees centigrade for a cold fermentation. This is the first stage – the making of a still, acidic wine, which is left to be fermented completely dry.
Once it becomes protein and cold stable, it goes through a filtration process. Just before bottling, a culture – a mixture of wine, sugar and yeast – is made up to add to the wine as all the sugar will have been used up by the yeast in the first fermentation. This is the essential step in the making of a cap classique. Alcohol percentage is about 10 – 12% per volume at this stage. (The amount of sugar added depends on the alcohol percentage and the pressure we want in the bottle at the end of the second fermentation – the pressure varies from 4 to 6 Bar). Before bottling, we blend the early harvest and the later oak matured wine, a critical step in our process, which creates the unique taste of our Chantelle.
During the bottling process, the wine must be continuously mixed to ensure proper distribution of sugars and yeast. This process ensures that each bottle is as alike to each other, as possible. The bottles are then closed using a crown cap (like a beer bottle) to ensure that the CO2 produced during this second fermentation is captured in the bottle – this is the magic bubble that gives MCC its unique character!
The bottles are then lain down and stacked on their sides for the second fermentation to begin – we want almost all the sugars to be converted to alcohol. This is what we refer to as leaving the wine on the lees. The cooler the fermentation temperature, the better, as it slows fermentation, which gives a smaller and more consistent bubble. At Chantelle we leave our MCC on the lees for a minimum of 5 years.
When we take the wine off the lees, we start the riddling process – the wine needs to be purified of the used yeast . The riddling process starts where the bottles are shaken in one direction and then the other direction daily, with a jerky movement to loosen the lees. At the same time the bottles are slightly tilted towards the crown caps, increasing daily until the bottle sits on its head with all the lees (the sediment created during the fermentation) in the neck of the bottle on the crown cap. The bottles are kept in this position until they are ready for release.
Disgorging is the next step – The lees have now all settled in the neck of the bottles below the crown caps. The bottle heads are placed in a bath of glycol mixture at 40C. This freezes the part of the liquid containing the sediment. The bottles are placed upright and the the crown caps are then removed allowing the frozen sediment to escape – they pop out with a small amount of wine, due to internal pressure. It is at this stage the bottles are topped off with wine to their fill levels, and a cork and wire hood applied.
Et voila! From now on it is MCC and no longer wine and ready to drink!
