The Secret Champagne They Serve at French Embassies | Champagne Gremillet

We're going to Champagne! Actually, we are going to the south in Cote d'Ivoire to go visit Champagne du Remoulet. We are just driving fast on a French highway about two hours to the southernmost reaches of Champagne. Quick detour en route for some beautiful sunflowers as we head down to drink some Champagne at 10 in the morning. This is gorgeous. So we're in the region of Aube. This is where the Cote d'Ivoire is and you'll find a lot more grower Champagnes here. Champagne kind of works in two main ways. We have negotiants who literally buy juice from grapes. They'll go to vineyards. They'll see which vineyards they want and they'll buy that so that they can do their production from somebody else that's growing it. Grower Champagnes literally means that the person who's making the Champagne is growing the Champagne as well and you find a lot more of those down here. Go birdie! In this video, we're heading to the incredible Champagne du Remoulet. I'll be meeting with Anne du Remoulet to uncover the secrets of their winemaking from their historic cellars to modern techniques. We'll explore the grounds, learn a bit about their unique aging process on the Lys and finish with a guided tasting of some of their most celebrated Champagnes. And over there is six hectares belonging to us and this vineyard, nobody wanted it because it's quite difficult to work in it. Yeah, it's very steep, you know, like 45 percent, quite dangerous. So we decided to buy it anyway and today it's one of the best vineyards we have. Very good exposition, etc. So we keep it especially for the red wine, for making red wine. That's fabulous. Okay, let's go. We already own one part of this vineyard, so it's about two hectares now. Quite a big clove because actually about 35 cloves of Champagne. Only 10 of them are more than one litre. You could just fit in the vineyard. Look at that. So cute. We wish we could have stayed. So for every place that they export to, they have a different tree representing it in this arboretum. This one's from Greece and they're all from different areas. This one's from North America. They can keep the flora and fauna up the steps. Wow, it's like all over, all the way up and over. And we also have this globe made especially for us, made of different kind of wood. From here? I think so, I'm pretty sure, but it represents, you know, because we start with the export before the national market, so it's like, you know, it's a mix between biodiversity and exports and around the world. That's really cool. I know, it's your favourite place. So this is the press machine. They come into this press area. This will all be transformed completely as the grapes will come up and they actually start up at the top. They start up there and they go into the press and then they gravity flow down to the bottom and that's where the juice will go. So here we've got two 8,000 kilos machine. Over there is a 4,000 kilos and we've got another press centre in L'Elysée, same capacity. So 4,000 kilos in Champagne is called the mare. It will give 25.50 hectolitres of juice and we are going to keep only the very first press. So the big one is called the pubes, this is the one we are going to minify. The rest goes to distillery, we won't keep them. It's quite an important quality criteria because it will give better aging wine. It has also a cost because we need to cut more grapes each time to always keep the best. So you want to get that first press so this way you get the best wine that goes into the bottle. So we separate of course Quinoa and Chardonnay. They're all empty right now because harvest is yet to happen. So the reason why they're in these black bags is because they're bottles that don't need as much sunlight on them. So while they have lights for the room that's very low, the bags also add extra protection. When they're upside down, the yeast is heading to the bottom of the bottle so that this way you can get it ready to go through that system and get the disgorgement, disgorging the yeast and making it ready to be a final wine. I will show you the step before that. See Andries, this is the yeast that's helping with that second fermentation and over time they're kind of flipping it onto its head so all the yeast ends up here so they can get it out. Can you see? Yeah. So we have to keep it at least 15 months. For most of the, well all the cuvées, we have a bit longer aging. The minimum is 24 months for the entry level until 10 years for our Clorochet. This yeast will give the complexity to the wine. It's what we have to do according to the rooms, you know. 15 months minimum but they do 24 up to 10 years depending on the cuvée, depending on where the vineyards are from, depending on what they're trying to make in the end. So this is going in for 10 years and they've been here for so long because you can see like how dirty the bottles are but they'll stay like this until the complexity has been added from that lees aging. This thing is really cool. So this is the giro palette but it's a massive giro palette and what it does is it takes those bottles that have the yeast in it and they start in different levels and they slowly move it downwards so over time you'll see like there are different levels of spinning and that's getting the yeast down to the bottom of the bottle and this is how they're doing the process of getting everything all the yeast down so that it could then go through that bottling process and then it'll get labels on it and then we can open it and then we can drink it. The rosé gets the dis-deposit, that's the yeast. This is the yeast that helps with the second fermentation and then when it's on its side it's helping with lees aging which is adding that nuttiness and complexity and all of that and then they have to get rid of it because it's really chunky and you don't want to drink it as much. That large riddler over there, the giro palette, that replaced this so they would literally like pick up the bottle and move the bottles up so that would get the yeast to the bottom of the bottle and they start off like this. This is how a champagne cork starts and then it gets squished and put in the bottle and after it makes the mushroom on top. They need the fatter cork because it's a sparkling wine so it pushes out to stop the atmospheres of pressure from leaking outward. So it starts, it comes off, you get the foil on the top and then it goes through here. The bottles go through a system this way. They get their front label, they get turned, they get this label and they come out and they go somewhere else in the world. So these are the old great picking baskets and you can see on the side there's like a backpack strap on the bottom there. You would pick and then you'd bend over and throw them into a vat. These are other great picking baskets. Again everything is trailer. Barrel moving machines. Previously an old press. You know this tube? After Phylloxera, there wasn't any vineyard anywhere in Europe. And when we wanted to plant again, the Marne Valley didn't want the old valley. The people from the old neighborhood wanted to make the revolution. So they used this tool which is usually used for like a weapon you know. It's a revolution and it's a race. So Phylloxera happened which is a little tiny bug that destroyed the wine world in Europe and after that happened Champagne went through a revolution where as she was saying the people in the Vallée de Marne didn't want the Côte d'Ivoire down here. The wineries down here to be part of the region of Champagne. So that, that little backhoe up there is a symbol that kind of represents that. While it's a symbol of farming, this was also the tool that they were threatening to be part of the region with. Like this revolution of getting the whole department of Champagne to be together. So it also includes the valley down here. And down the stairs and into some other really great room. Now we have a barrel cellar, some more old riddling racks. So this is the same as before, the riddling racks. But now they're used as a decoration down here. And we have some barrels that are going through the aging process. So they have a library that goes back to 2003 till now. So you can see the vineyards from there. Oh I had your 2008. So that would have been one of the first five years of the winery. That's so cool. So we only have one UV made in here. This is UV évidence, 100% of chardonnay and where the fermentation takes place in barrels. Six months ago. So this is going to add more like richness, intensity and generosity to the wine. We don't use them at all. It's only water. It's just to show how it was. So this is a museum aspect. It's showcasing what the winery was like, what this region was like when they were using riddling racks. All of them are only filled with water unfortunately. It showcases how the riddling racks would have been used. And somebody would have come, they would have picked up the bottle, turned it, put it down, so that they would have got the yeast to the bottom of the neck. Nowadays there is no interest. So I know sometimes you can see. This is so much work. Yeah when you yeah it's too much work and it's too long you know. Three weeks instead of five days or so. Do you know how much more expensive champagne would be if they kept doing this? At least another like hundred dollars. Especially in today's money. It's a blending rosé, so mix of red and white juice. Then we've got the middle range with the Zero Dosage, Blanc de Blanc and Blanc de Noir. Here it's mainly about Pinot Noir. We've got the Maceration Rosé. Then we have the Vintage 2016 made of Pinot Noir only. And the very new one, so the Clorogy. And the very new one is an organic color. And this is the, this is still wine. It's still red and it's still rosé. Black Grapes. It could be a mix of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier or Pinot Nuit. Grapes only Pinot Noir. Blanc de Blanc means white champagnes coming from white grapes. Champagne with white grapes. So it's so easy, it's the same process. White of black and white of white. Exactly. The only difference here is the grapes. So we add an extra glass so you can compare. No reserve wine, just 2017 in the glass. Pinot Noir is our basis here. For this wine, what they'll do is they'll make up to between almost a hundred wines from different parcels from different areas. They'll taste all of them and see which is going to go into the vintage. So even though it's a hundred percent Pinot Noir, it's all from 2017, it's still a blended wine from across their vineyards and across the region that they're making wine in. Very nice terroir for Chardonnay. It's a very nice place. All right, so there's a full range of wines here and a lot of champagne to get through. The best thing about Grémynée is that you really get a full aspect of champagne as a region. You can start off with this is pretty much zero sugar. You're really getting a very terroir driven, racy aspect of what champagne can do. Then you're going to go into the Brut. This is the Ambassador. You know, this is a wine room that's been around the world multiple times. They're showcasing this region in the glass. This bottle really showcases that. Then we get into the two grapes that Grémynée is getting into. We have the Blanc du Noir, the white of red, and the Blanc du Blanc, the white of white. This really showcases you what Pinot Noir and what Chardonnay does in the glass, where you have something that's more racy and structured versus something that's more pillowy and generous. You can see the two differences within the grapes where in these two wines you have a blend of the two plus some reserve wine from previous years. Then we get into the Vintage. Champagne is a blended region. You get a blend of years, you get a blend of grapes, you get a blend of different areas all together. But in Vintage Champagne, you get a snapshot. This is a 2017 snapshot. We're really showcasing exactly what's happening within the year and it really does give a fabulous view on the palate. And we get Pinot Noir in this too with extended injuries. Then we get into the La Vendance, which is a barrel aged Chardonnay base and this is giving that generosity, that pillowyness, that beautiful bride of the glass you can get from Chardonnay. And then we finish with the Forget-Me-Not because you can't forget that there is bio-organic wine up in here as well. Even though it's a very small amount, people work very, very hard to make that example of organic wine with this. Thank you so much for watching this episode. If you enjoyed every moment as much as I did, make sure to pop a like on this video. And if you want to join in on all the fun, make sure to hit that subscribe button and ring the bell so you won't miss a single drop of all future wine adventures. Cheers everyone!