Wine Production: Bottling Line

Domaine Chandon is the California outpost of the biggest Champagne house Moët & Chandon in Champagne, France.  Moet was the first ever Champagne house owning a sparkling winery in California, opening the beautiful sparkling winery Domaine Chandon in 1973.  

At Domaine Chandon, the bottling line is in full operation every day of the year, while most other wineries bottle for a short period in Spring. (Gives you an idea of what large producers of wine they are) 

Since Domaine Chandon's wine (DC for short) is bottled on the daily, I'm providing a step-by-step breakdown of the bottling line at Chandon. 

Bottling wine--steps:

[after wine has already gone through second fermentation...]
**note: at DC, they proudly practice the traditional way of making Sparkling wine, also known as the méthode champenoise. 
1. Freezing unit 
2. Disgorger
3. Dosage  

A dosage is a sweetened spirit. For the dosage, DC uses a liqueur. The liqueur is a base wine composed of about 65%  sugar, allowing for a high alcohol content. (yeast loves sugar, and together they make alcohol) Simply put, more sugar means more ethanol- so a good liqueur with high sugar content makes for a perfect dosage.
4. Fill equalizer
5. Cork
6. Wire hooder

To hold the cork in place--sparkling wine is under approx 90 psi of pressure!   

7. Foiler

8. Labels, packaging 



{the final product. Isn't it beautiful?}



Cheers,
B

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