Riddling

Speaking in a riddle or riddles; containing a riddle. «Riddling triplets.» Tennyson. -- Rid·dling, adv.

[RIHD-ling] Madame Clicquot, a young French widow who took over her dead husband's champagne house in 1805, was the visionary who developed the important riddling procedure-a way to remove dead yeast cells from bottles of sparkling wine made by the méthode champenoise. In the step just before riddling, a bottling dosage (dosage de tirage or liqueur de tirage) and yeast are added to a cuvée (a blend of still wines) to produce a secondary fermentation in the bottle. The sediment that forms during this secondary fermentation is maneuvered into the neck of the bottle and up against the cork or crown cap through riddling (called remuage in France). The riddling process consists of positioning the bottles upside down at a 45° angle in specially built racks called pupitres. Every 3 or 4 days, a trained worker (called a remuer in France) gives the bottles a shake and a slight turn, gradually increasing the angle of tilt and dropping the bottle back in the rack with a slight whack. In 6 to 8 weeks, all the bottles are positioned straight downward and the sediment has collected in the neck. The sediment is then removed by another step called disgorgement. A skilled remuer can handle over 30,000 bottles per day. Although riddling was once done entirely by hand, today many winemakers are employing large metal racks (pioneered in Spain) that hold over 500 bottles. These racks-called girasols in Spain, gyropallets in France, and VLMs (very large machines) in the United States-mechanically perform the riddling process and have dramatically shortened the procedure. Another process being tried is the placement of yeast in calcium alginate beads (also called encapsulated yeasts), which fall to the neck of the bottle immediately when it is turned upside down. If successful, this technique could eliminate the need for riddling altogether.