Vibrating desk

Vibrating desk

The legendary riddling console is a rack from the Champagne region, which is primarily used to remove the yeast after the second fermentation.
Before the maturation period ends, the bottles are transferred to these vibrating trays. They are placed upside down at an angle in the openings of large perforated boards and turned and tilted slightly every day so that they are almost upside down at the end of the riddling period. In this way, all residues are deposited directly on the cork.

The manual vibrating process takes two to three months, with the machine (a so-called gyropalette is a vibrating frame driven by electric motors) it takes about a week. Manual labour is said to produce a better product. An experienced remuiter can properly riddle up to 40,000 to 50,000 bottles a day. Proper riddling requires three stages:

• A slight rotation of the bottle (often only a fraction of a centimetre)
• A gentle tug to shift the yeast sediment on the bottle wall
• A slight increase in the inclination of the bottle in the hole of the vibrating console

Herr DeSousa des Champagner-Hauses DeSousa & Fils führt vor, wie seine hervorragenden Champagne gerüttelt werden.
This type of riddling in the riddling console exposes the wine in the bottle evenly to the lees. This allows the precious flavours of the yeast to penetrate the wine better. Although many houses now use mechanised gyropalettes, they often do not do without manual riddling for their top champagnes.

The museum of the renowned champagne house Castellane impressively demonstrates how the lees were gradually shifted in the sand before the invention of the riddling console.
The invention of the shaking table is thanks to a clever Bavarian emigrant named Antoine Müller and the famous widow Clicquot. Legend has it that Madame Clicquot and her extremely talented cellar master Müller initially used the kitchen table for their experiments and perforated it accordingly (as a prototype).

 

 

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