Vibrating desk

Das legendäre Rüttelpult ist ein Gestell aus der Champagne, welches nach der zweiten Gärung primär dem Enthefen dient.
Before the end of the aging period, the bottles are transferred to these riddling desks. They are placed head first in an inclined position in the openings of large perforated boards and slightly rotated and tilted every day so that they are almost upside down at the end of this riddling period. In this way, all residues are deposited directly on the cork.

By hand, the process of jogging takes two to three months, with the machine (a so-called gyropalette represents a jogging frame driven by electric motors) takes about a week. The manual work is said to give the better product. An experienced remueur can properly jog up to 40,000 to 50,000 bottles a day. Proper jogging requires three stages:
1. a slight rotation of the bottle (often only a fraction of an inch);
2. a gentle tug to shift the lees on the wall of the bottle;
3. a slight increase in the inclination of the bottle in the hole of the shaking desk.

Herr DeSousa des Champagner-Hauses DeSousa & Fils führt vor, wie seine hervorragenden Champagner gerüttelt werden.
Shaking of this type in the shaker evenly exposes the wine in the bottle to the lees. The precious aromas of the yeast can thus penetrate the wine better. Although many houses now use mechanical gyropalettes, however, they often do not abandon hand riddling for their top champagnes.

In the museum of the renowned champagne house Castellane is impressively shown how the shifting of the lees before the invention of the shaking desk was carried out step by step in the sand (picture can be enlarged by clicking).
The invention of the riddling desk is owed 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 made use of the kitchen table when experimenting and (in the sense of a prototype) perforated it accordingly.