How Champagne Is Made: The Traditional Method for WSET

Why Every WSET Student Needs to Know How Champagne Is Made

Ask a room of WSET students which topic they expected to be easy, and sparkling wine often comes up. After all, you just add bubbles, right? Then the exam asks you to explain how Champagne is made and why it tastes of toast and brioche, and suddenly the details matter.

The good news: the traditional method is one of the most logical processes in the whole syllabus. Every step has a clear purpose, and once you understand the “why” behind each one, you can explain it confidently in a multiple-choice question or a written answer. This guide walks you through each stage in order, using the terms WSET expects you to know.

Where Sparkling Wine Sits in the WSET Syllabus

Before we dive in, here’s how much this topic is worth, according to the current official specifications (Level 2 Issue 2.1, 2026, and Level 3 Issue 2, 2022):

Level	What you need to know	Weight in the exam
🥂 Level 2	Traditional (bottle fermentation) method and tank method, plus key styles and labelling terms such as Brut, Demi-Sec, Vintage and Non-Vintage	Sparkling and fortified wines together: 6 of 50 multiple-choice questions
🍾 Level 3	Six methods (traditional, transfer, tank, Asti, ancestral, carbonation), Champagne sub-regions, grapes, styles and sweetness terms	5 of 50 multiple-choice marks, and sparkling plus fortified wines share 20 of 100 written marks

So at Level 3, sparkling wine can appear in a short written answer question, where you need to describe the steps and link them to the style. That’s exactly what this guide trains you to do.

WSET updates its specifications from time to time, so always check the latest version with your course provider.

Step 1: Growing and Pressing the Grapes

A cool climate for high acidity

Champagne is the most northerly major wine region in France, and its cool climate is the starting point for everything. Grapes ripen slowly and are picked with high acidity and moderate sugar, which gives base wines with high acidity and fairly low alcohol. That’s exactly what you want, because the second fermentation will add a little more alcohol later.

The three main grapes

Grape	Share of vineyard	What it brings to the blend
🍇 Pinot Noir	About 38%	Body and structure, red fruit aromas
🍋 Chardonnay	About 31%	Freshness, citrus and floral notes, ageing potential
🍑 Meunier	About 31%	Roundness and supple, fruity character; tends to age faster

Figures from the Comité Champagne.

Pinot Noir dominates the Montagne de Reims and the Côte des Bar, Chardonnay is the star of the Côte des Blancs, and Meunier, which buds later and so is less exposed to spring frost, does well in the Vallée de la Marne.

Gentle whole bunch pressing

Grapes are usually pressed as whole bunches, slowly and gently. This matters most for the black grapes: gentle pressing extracts clear juice with very little color from the skins, which is how Pinot Noir and Meunier can make white wine.

Champagne rules also limit how much juice can be taken: from every 4,000 kg of grapes, only 2,050 litres of first juice (the cuvée) and 500 litres of the taille may be used. The cuvée is the purest, most delicate juice.

Step 2: The First Fermentation and Blending

The juice is settled, then fermented into dry, still base wines. Malolactic conversion is optional: some producers allow it for a softer style, others block it to keep sharper acidity.

Then comes one of the most important moments: blending (the assemblage). A winemaker can blend wines from different grape varieties, different villages and different years. Wines held back from previous harvests are called reserve wines, and they add complexity and help a house produce the same style every year, whatever the weather. This is why most Champagne is non-vintage.

💡 Tip: In a written answer, don’t just say “Champagne is blended”. Explain why: blending across years with reserve wines smooths out vintage variation in a cool, marginal climate and keeps the house style consistent. That link between cause and effect is what earns marks at Level 3.

Step 3: Tirage and the Second Fermentation in Bottle

The blended base wine is bottled with the liqueur de tirage, a mix of wine, sugar and yeast (plus a riddling agent that helps the yeast settle later). The bottle is sealed, usually with a crown cap.

Inside the closed bottle, the yeast ferments the added sugar. This second fermentation produces a little more alcohol and, crucially, carbon dioxide that can’t escape, so it dissolves into the wine. The result is a pressure of around 5 to 6 bar, roughly three times the pressure in a car tyre. This is why Champagne bottles are made from thick, strong glass.

This step is the heart of the traditional method: the wine becomes sparkling in the same bottle it is sold in.

Step 4: Ageing on the Lees

Once the second fermentation is over, the dead yeast cells (the lees) stay in the bottle with the wine. Over months and years, they slowly break down in a process called yeast autolysis, releasing compounds that change the flavor and texture of the wine.

In the WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting, these aromas are secondary aromas from yeast: think biscuit, pastry, bread, toasted bread and bread dough. With longer bottle age, the wine can also develop tertiary notes such as honey and nuts. If you want to sharpen your vocabulary here, our aroma wheel guide explains the difference between primary, secondary and tertiary aromas.

The legal minimums are worth memorizing:

Category	Minimum time in the cellar after bottling
🥂 Non-vintage	At least 15 months
📅 Vintage	At least 3 years

In practice, most producers go well beyond these minimums. The Comité Champagne notes that non-vintage wines typically spend 2 to 3 years in the cellar, and vintage wines often 4 to 10 years.

Step 5: Riddling (Remuage)

After ageing, the lees need to come out, otherwise the wine would be cloudy. First, they have to be moved into the neck of the bottle. This is riddling.

Traditionally, bottles are placed in wooden racks called pupitres, and a skilled worker gives each bottle a long series of small turns and tilts until it ends up almost upside down, with the sediment resting against the cap. Done by hand, this takes about 4 to 6 weeks.

Today, most bottles are riddled by machine (often called a gyropalette), which moves hundreds of bottles at once and can do the job in about a week, with no loss of quality.

Step 6: Disgorgement

Now the sediment sits in the neck, ready to be removed. In disgorgement, the neck of the bottle is dipped into a freezing solution (around -27°C), which traps the lees in a small plug of ice. The cap is taken off, and the pressure inside pushes the frozen plug out.

A little wine is lost in the process, which leads straight to the final step.

Step 7: Dosage, Corking and Sweetness Levels

Before the final cork goes in, the bottle is topped up with the liqueur d’expédition, a mix of wine and sugar. This is the dosage, and it decides how sweet the finished Champagne will be. Because the base wine is so high in acid, a small amount of sugar balances it without making it taste sweet.

The bottle is then sealed with its mushroom-shaped cork and a wire cage (the muselet).

The sweetness terms you need for WSET are Brut Nature, Brut and Demi-Sec, but it helps to see the full scale:

Term	Sugar (grams per litre)	How it tastes
🦴 Brut Nature	Less than 3, no sugar added	Bone dry
🍋 Extra Brut	0 to 6	Very dry
🥂 Brut	Less than 12	Dry (by far the most common style)
🍏 Extra Dry	12 to 17	Off-dry
🍐 Sec	17 to 32	Medium-dry
🍯 Demi-Sec	32 to 50	Medium-sweet
🍰 Doux	More than 50	Sweet

A common exam trap: “Extra Dry” is sweeter than “Brut”, even though it sounds drier.

Champagne Styles and Labelling Terms

Once you understand the method, the styles make sense quickly:

• Non-vintage: a blend of several years, made to a consistent house style.
• Vintage: made from a single, usually excellent year, and aged for at least three years.
• Blanc de Blancs: made only from white grapes, usually Chardonnay.
• Blanc de Noirs: made only from black grapes (Pinot Noir and/or Meunier).
• Premier Cru and Grand Cru: made from grapes grown in villages with these higher classifications.

For Level 3, also learn the five sub-regions named in the specification: Montagne de Reims, Côte des Blancs, Vallée de la Marne, Côte des Bar and Côte de Sézanne. Our memory hacks for wine regions can help you lock them in.

Traditional Method vs Other Sparkling Wine Methods

WSET loves to test the differences between production methods. Here’s a quick comparison:

Method	Where the bubbles form	Typical result	Classic examples
🍾 Traditional	Second fermentation in the bottle it is sold in	Complex, with yeast (autolytic) notes if aged long on lees	Champagne, Cava, Crémant
🔄 Transfer	Second fermentation in bottle, then emptied into a tank, filtered and rebottled	Some autolytic character, with no riddling or disgorgement needed	Many Australian sparkling wines, very small or very large bottles
🛢️ Tank	Second fermentation in a sealed tank	Fresh and fruity, made to drink young	Prosecco (Glera)
🍑 Asti	A single fermentation in a pressurized tank, stopped early by chilling and filtering	Sweet, low in alcohol, grapey and floral	Asti (Muscat)

At Level 2, focus on the traditional and tank methods. At Level 3, you need all of them, plus the ancestral method and carbonation. If you’re deciding whether to move up a level, our WSET Level 2 vs Level 3 comparison explains how much deeper Level 3 goes.

How to Remember the Steps

Here’s a simple sequence to rehearse until you can say it without notes:

1. Press gently (whole bunches, cuvée and taille)
2. Ferment to a dry, still base wine
3. Blend (grapes, villages, reserve wines)
4. Tirage: add sugar and yeast, seal with a crown cap
5. Second fermentation in bottle (bubbles and pressure)
6. Age on lees (autolysis: biscuit, bread, toast)
7. Riddle the lees into the neck
8. Disgorge the frozen plug
9. Dosage, then cork and cage

Writing this list from memory a few times a week, then explaining what each step does to the wine, is a great form of active recall. If you’re preparing for Level 3, also read our guide to the most common Level 3 theory mistakes, especially the part about linking every fact to the style of the wine.

🍾 Want to master sparkling wine for your exam?
The VinoPrep app helps you lock in production methods, regions and styles with WSET-style mock exams, flashcards and interactive wine maps, and shows you which topics still need work.
Download VinoPrep on iOS | Download VinoPrep on Android

Key Takeaways

• Champagne is made by the traditional method: the second fermentation happens in the bottle the wine is sold in.
• A cool climate gives high-acid, fairly low-alcohol base wines, and blending with reserve wines keeps the house style consistent.
• Lees ageing (at least 15 months for non-vintage, 3 years for vintage) creates yeast aromas of biscuit, bread and toast.
• Riddling and disgorgement remove the lees; the dosage sets the sweetness level (Brut means less than 12 g/L).
• At Level 2, know the traditional and tank methods; at Level 3, know all six methods and be ready to explain the “why” behind each step.

Frequently Asked Questions