What is methode traditionnelle?

A still base wine is given yeast and sugar and goes into the cellar under a crown cap, where the second fermentation traps the carbon dioxide in the wine.

The figures behind that step are precisely laid down in Champagne. About 24 grams of sugar per litre go into the wine, added as liqueur de tirage with 500 to 625 grams of rock sugar per litre. The yeast culture contains 40 to 80 million living cells per millilitre and is dosed at 3 litres per hectolitre of wine, which comes to 1.2 to 2.4 million living yeast cells per litre of wine.

During fermentation the alcohol content rises by 1.2 to 1.3 percent and the pressure builds up to 6 kg/cm2. The cellars hold a constant temperature of 9 to 12 degrees, summer and winter. A historical variant, the champagne cremant, received half of that sugar, 12 grams instead of 24, and thus about half the pressure.

Article 53 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/33 ties the designations traditional method, classical method and classical traditional method to three strict conditions.

• The second alcoholic fermentation takes place in the bottle.
• The wine stays in contact with the yeast for at least nine months without interruption, counted from the moment fermentation in the bottle begins.
• The wine is separated from the yeast by disgorging.

The broader designation bottle-fermented is also allowed, but sets lighter requirements: the entire production process including maturation takes at least nine months, the wine rests on the lees for at least 90 days, and separation may also be done by filtration instead of disgorging. For crémant, further conditions apply: hand harvesting, a maximum of 100 litres of must per 150 kilos of grapes, at most 150 milligrams of sulphur dioxide per litre and less than 50 grams of sugar per litre.

The product file of the AOC Champagne goes further than the European minimum requirement and works with three periods after the tirage.

• Tirage may only begin on 1 January following the harvest.
• Disgorging may not take place earlier than twelve months after the tirage.
• Sale is only allowed after fifteen months, and for a millésime after thirty-six months.

The product specification allows no other route: the wines are made exclusively by a second fermentation in glass bottles. The press yield is limited to 102 litres of clarified must per 160 kilos of processed grapes. The appellation itself rests on the decree of 29 June 1936. In 2025 the region shipped 266 million bottles, about 152 million of them abroad.

Quality sparkling wine must, according to Annex VII of Regulation (EU) nr. 1308/2013, have at least 3.5 bar overpressure at 20 degrees Celsius in a closed bottle.

• Sparkling wine: at least 3 bar; the cuvée has a total alcohol content of at least 8.5 percent by volume.
• Quality sparkling wine: at least 3.5 bar; the cuvée has a total alcohol content of at least 9 percent by volume.
• Aromatic quality sparkling wine: at least 3 bar, with an actual alcohol content of at least 6 and a total of at least 10 percent by volume.

That pressure comes from the sugar of the tirage. The addition may raise the total alcohol content of the cuvée by at most 1.5 percent by volume, and in Champagne the pressure at the end of fermentation rises to 6 kg/cm2. A bottle that sparkles only through added carbon dioxide falls into a different category and may not call itself quality sparkling wine.

No, since 31 August 1994 that designation is no longer permitted; the transitional period was set out in Regulation (EEC) No 2333/92 and repeated in Regulation (EC) No 554/95.

Since then, producers outside Champagne have used the designations that Article 53 does allow: traditional method, classical method, classical traditional method and bottle-fermented by the traditional method, each in the language version of the Member State concerned. In Dutch you will usually read methode traditionnelle or traditionele methode.

The distinction is not cosmetic. Méthode traditionnelle only describes the production method and says nothing about origin. Champagne is also a protected designation of origin: that name may only be used on wine from the delimited region that meets the product specification, with the associated periods of 12, 15 and 36 months.