Élevage

What the word covers

Élevage starts after fermentation finishes and ends at bottling. In between, the wine may be racked off its gross lees, allowed to go through malolactic conversion, blended with other parcels, transferred into barrel, fined, filtered, cold-stabilised and adjusted for sulphur. Each step is a deliberate choice, and the sum of those choices is what gives a wine its final shape.

For a premium English still Chardonnay, the typical élevage might be 9 to 12 months in French oak, with bâtonnage every fortnight. For a traditional method sparkling, the base wine élevage might be 3 to 6 months before the liqueur de tirage is added, and then a further 24 to 60 months on lees after the second fermentation. Both counts as élevage, even though they look very different in the cellar.

Élevage in the UK

Élevage is a relatively new concept in the UK, because the industry itself is young. The first English commercial vineyards, planted in the 1960s and 1970s, did not have the cash flow to keep wines in barrel for long. Today, the leading producers invest heavily in élevage programmes, with barrel rooms, lees-ageing cellars and a dedicated team to manage the long months between harvest and bottling.

The economics of a long élevage are real. A barrel costs money, a cellar costs money, and the wine is locked up and unsellable while it ages. UK producers price their premium wines accordingly, with the long-aged cuvées sitting well above the entry-level Brut. The consumer pays for time, and many are happy to do so.

Barrel choices

For Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, the typical English élevage programme uses 225-litre Bordeaux barriques, 228-litre Burgundy pièces or, increasingly, 500-litre puncheons. New oak is used sparingly, often blended back with older barrels to keep the oak signature in proportion to the fruit. Toast level is light to medium, chosen to add spice and structure without overwhelming the wine.

For sparkling wines, the base wine is usually fermented and stored in stainless steel, with a proportion fermented or aged in old oak for complexity. The lees ageing, in bottle, on the dead yeast cells from the second fermentation, is the longest part of the élevage and the most important for the final character of the wine.

Topping and ullage

During barrel élevage, a small amount of wine evaporates through the wood, roughly 2 to 4 percent per year for a 225-litre barrel. This creates ullage, the empty space between the wine and the bung, which must be topped up regularly, typically every one to two weeks, with the same wine from another barrel of the same lot. Letting ullage grow risks oxidation and spoilage.

Topping is a quiet but essential part of the cellar routine. A large English winery with several hundred barrels might spend half a person-day per week on nothing but topping. Smaller producers do it themselves, often with a portable pump and a measuring jug.

When élevage ends

The winemaker decides when the wine is ready to bottle. For still wines, the trigger is usually a combination of taste and analysis: the right balance of fruit, oak and structure, low enough volatile acidity, stable colour, appropriate sulphur. For sparkling wines, the trigger is usually the lees ageing clock: 24 months for the basic tier, 36 to 48 for vintage, 60 to 84 for prestige cuvées.

Premature bottling is one of the most common mistakes in young wine regions. Producers in their first decade of operation sometimes bottle too early, eager to release and sell. The wines that age the best, in any country, are usually the ones that have had the longest, calmest élevage before they were put in bottle.