A tour of Ruinart's 1729 cellars, built in Roman chalk quarries. The Dom Renard ages on cork for ten years before hand riddling and disgorgement. Cork closures let more oxygen in than crown caps, changing how the wine develops.
[FOREIGN] So we are in Ruinart. We are about to go downstairs into the caves below. You can see there's the stairway that we're going to be going down. This is such a unique winery. It's one of the very first houses that actually got established in Champagne. There's a Dom that's with this as well, Dom Thierry Ruedenaert, but it's his nephew that started Maison Ruedenaert in 1729. And they have some fabulous caves. The caves are amazing because they were dug out by the Romans to use chalk, which is basically what all of this is on top of, so that they could build things, build the city, all of that. And they left these amazing caves behind. So that's where the wine is going to be aged today. There's quite a few houses that have different caves. We're seeing the ones that are carved out of chalk. Got some bottles here underneath in the caves. These have been aging for quite some time. There's so many more. You can always tell what's aging. We have some wine. This is probably their top cuvées aging under cork staple. This will really give more of an oxidative edge to it, but they have both types in here. Magnums under this cork staple will be adding a little bit more oxygenation to the winemaking process. This is great for breathability for them. This just goes on and on and on. These bottles here under cork are aging from 2022. This is Don Renard. This is the tête de cuvée. Don Renard, super important they put it under these corks with staples because you're going to get a totally bold interesting top of the top relaxed version of this style. So these are different bottles that are aged under cap, and it's going to give a totally different wine in there. Aged on cork, aged on cap. These wines will be waiting 10 years on lees before they are ready to go. And this is where all the Ruinart in the world is just waiting before it becomes the wine that you get to drink. This is Dom Vignard. Now we get into the actual chalk caves. So right up at the top, it goes up so, so high. This was all dug out by hand, piece by piece, brick by brick. These are the giant chalk bases, the undersoil of all of Champagne that the Romans dug out to make these caves. It's just so grand. They go on. There's a lot of chalk bedrock here. This cave is just massive. It's the perfect place to age bottles. So this is an old-school riddling rack. And you can see there's some sediment underneath there, and it takes some time to get all the bottles up and ready so that the sediment is at the bottom. And over time, they turn up so that the sediment is close to the top, and then it moves down into the neck, going slowly, being moved up and up and up. So this top row would then be ready to be disgorged. You can actually see it a lot better on these Magnum riddling racks, how they kind of start at a different pace and then go down over time. That all of those lees aging, all that lees inside the bottle for the second fermentation ends up in that neck for disgorgement. So in total, there's about 4 million bottles and around 2 harvests that can be kept within the caves. And as you saw, the lights just went out, so it can get quite dark in here. So from 2010, they have been aging their Dom Renard on corks. So this is really great to see for a tête de cuvée. They're also doing hand riddling as well. The other available bottles from Ruynacht are done with gyro-pella, and you'll also find them under cap closure. But we can see a lot more oxygenation and a lot more time and effort being put into a tête de cuvée like this. You really have to put a lot of time and effort and handwork into a tête de cuvée that is aged under cork with a staple, and they put it through the riddling rack. They're hand disgorging it as well. There's a lot of extra steps into this wine, which make it exactly what it's supposed to be in the glass.
Thank you so much for coming along on this adventure with me. If you had as much fun as I did, make sure to pop a like on this video. We have so many more wineries to visit and people to meet, so if you want to join in on all the fun, make sure you hit the subscribe subscribe button and hit the bell so you don't miss a single drop of all future wine adventures. Cheers, till next time!
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