The House Duménil is installed in Chigny-les-Roses, a village classified as Premier Cru situated in the heart of the Montagne de Reims. The family owns 8 hectares of vines divided up into 45 parcels and 3 Premier Cru villages: Chigny-les-Roses, Ludes and Rilly-la-Montagne.
The clay-chalk ground and pure chalk at some places is ideally suited to the 3 traditional grape varieties cultivated in the Champagne Region, i.e. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.
Grape varieties split in the Duménil vineyard: 45% of Chardonnay, 15% of Pinot Noir and 40% of Pinot Meunier. This explains why we favour the elegance and finesse of Chardonnay grapes in our Prestige Cuvée and our Millésimé (Vintage), and this is also the reason why we make the red wine to be used in our Brut Rosé with our old vines from Pinot Meunier.
Hugues and his workers cuddle the vines all year round, carrying out the various works necessary to obtain the best possible grapes.
These types of pruning are stricter and aim at limiting the number of clusters per vine and therefore favour the concentration of aromas thanks to lowered yields.
Harvesting is done exclusively by hand. The grapes are transported to our pressing facilities in Sacy. The grapes are then pressed in our modern Coquard press with sloping plates. Only the first pressing (la cuvée) is used to make our Champagnes. The must undergoes the alcoholic and malolactic fermentation in our cuverie, where big stainless steel tanks are to be found. Parcels displaying different characteristics are vinified separately, like each grape variety. The still wines resulting from this process rest for a few months in tanks (except for the red wine from Pinot Meunier, which rests in oak barrels) before they are tasted by Frédérique, Hugues and their oenologist.
Blending is one of the key-steps of the champagne-making process for this is when the future of the wine is at stake. If the quality of the grapes from the harvest year is exceptional we decide to make a vintage. Every year, we make the non vintage cuvees using a subtle blend of wines from the harvest year completed with reserve wines kept in stainless steel tanks for 1 to 3 years. The endeavour consists in obtaining identical aromas, a constant quality for the non vintage cuvees, which reflect the style of our House, characterized by fruity, elegant wines with full-bodied aromas.
After blending we proceed to wine bottling, using a metal cap to close the bottles. We then bring the bottles into our cellars to store them horizontally. This is when the 2nd alcoholic fermentation takes place: the sugar added when bottling turns the yeast cells into alcohol with an emission of carbon dioxide, which gives birth to the bubbles in our champagnes. The non vintage cuvees rest for 4 years in our cellars (much more than the 15 month-period set by law) and the vintage cuvees age 7 years (instead of 3 years) before dispatching.
Key-step in the life of our wines and specific to the champagne making process, disgorging consists in expelling the sediment made up with dead yeast cells after a long ageing period. Beforehand the bottles have been riddled until they’ve reached a vertical position. The neck of each bottle is dipped into a freezing solution. An ice block forms around the lees, imprisoning it. We then remove the metal cap, allowing the 6 bar pressure contained in each bottle to provoke the ejection of the ice block containing the sediment.
Dosage is then added, secret recipe of each House and adapted to each cuvee, usually made up with cane sugar and reserve wines coming from the best vintages. This final touch allows us to bring roundness and smoothness to the cuvee, but also to define the style of Duménil champagne, subtle blend of fruitiness and elegance.