Three or four months before the envisaged marketing date, the riddling process will begin. This consists of amassing the deposit made up by the inactive lees and moving it towards the bottleneck in contact with the 'bidule' (the crown cap's plastic pot designed to recover the lees).

      The three following operations then take place:

- "Pointage"

		The bottles are inclined at approximately 35° on an oak trestle or riddling rack, comprising two plain rectangular boards hinged at the top. Each side is bored with six bevelled holes, along ten rows. Each riddling rack can hold 120 bottles and there are specially created models for large containers.
				Cristal Roederer

The cellar man, also known as a riddler, is in charge of this manipulation. He gives each bottle a sharp twist back and forth, in order to loosen the sediments' adhesion to the glass and allow it to slide towards the bottleneck. Then it is left to rest for two to three weeks, as the wine must be completely limpid before each riddling movement.

- Riddling

Holding the bottles by their base, the cellar man gives each bottle a brief and sharp twist of 1/8, 1/6, or 1/4 of a turn, once to the left and once to the right. The aim is to loosen the adhesion of the sediment (made heavier by the adjuvants of riddling) to the walls of the glass. It is then encouraged to move towards the bottleneck, onto the internal side of the bidule, without putting it back into suspension (marking the bottles with white paint makes this operation easier). Over the weeks, he nudges them upwards little by little, taking them to a vertical position, neck down ('sur pointe').             These long and laborious movements are necessary because the sediment is not homogeneous, but comprises several layers of yeast and chemical precipitates (potassium bi-tartrate and tannoid substances).

-"Dépointage"

After riddling, the cellar man takes the bottles to store them neck down. Each bottleneck is wedged in the punt of the bottle beneath. This is known as "dépointage". In this way, the cellar man builds up a mass waiting for the disgorgement process.       The bottles are, in effect, wedged between three walls, slightly inclined against the bottom one. A first row of bottles is installed with the bottle heads against the ground. Five or six rows are linked up, one on top of another. The bottleneck is wedged in the punt of the bottle beneath. A mass like this is far more difficult and fragile to construct than the entreillage (a horizontal stack of bottles on laths).

      If ever a few bottles should slide, the mass will collapse and the breakage can be very significant.
      Traditionally, the riddling process is carried out by hand, by riddlers, who must treat their wines in a specific way at each period of the year, and in different parts of the same cellar in order to adapt this operation to the type of sediment.

      A good riddler can twist 40-50,000 bottles per day. This is  a reasonable quantity when you consider that twenty years ago the rate was as high as 70,000 bottles per day.
      The total duration of these riddling operations lasts at least six weeks and sometimes two to three months. This stage in the production of the effervescent wine of Champagne is very expensive both in terms of manpower and the workspace required.

Appendix: The riddling, its history...

      The riddling technique was totally unknown at the end of the 17th Century or through the 18th Century. The bottles left the cellar with their sediment and the addressee had to decant them himself. This explains the fact that the wine was served in a carafe and not in the original bottle.
      It was not until 1813, that the "mise sur pointe" (stacking neck down) technique appeared. It consisted of placing boards against walls, bored with holes for the bottles to be inserted. These bottles were then removed and subject to a series of rotations in order to obtain a build up of sediment in the bottleneck. Under the effect of gravity, part of this sediment descended slowly down to the cork; the remaining sediment stayed stuck to the walls of the bottle.
      This technique developed very quickly. History relates that widow Clicquot (veuve Clicquot) and her cellar master, Antoine de Müller, supposedly created the ancestor of the riddling rack. They carved into the kitchen table, "holes bored diagonally, so that the bottles could be inclined at a variety of angles [...] and so did not leave their place to be riddled".
      Other techniques, such as lightly tapping the bottle with a hammer or even, as they say, "unmasking" the sediment, were rapidly abandoned.
      From 1947, the yeast was made heavier and, therefore, easier to riddle. In 1973, the first computer-controlled 'gyros' appeared. They provided 504 bottles with rigorous movements, identical to those created by manual riddling, thanks to an electronic programme and a motorised base. This process initially unique to Champagne, later spread very quickly both in France and abroad. In fact anywhere where quality sparkling wines are produced and require a second bottle fermentation, it was taken up.
      It must be noted that the first patent of the mechanisation of riddling dates from 1909 and it was only adopted generally, following verification of its beneficial effects.

Four riddling systems are particularly used in Champagne:

      * The ‘Rotopal’, the most simple machine, allows 297 bottles to be placed in a square metal container. A pivot, situated at the centre of the mechanism, ensures the fixed angle inclination. The system is rotated manually by 1/8 of a turn until it reaches the next point of support.

      * The ‘Champarex’ is hexagon-shaped and contains either 183 or 381 bottles, which fit together in a rotary and reclinable metal base. It is rotated by hand, by 1/16 or 1/8 of a turn.

* The ‘Gyro’ is made up from two subsets: the pallet-case containing 504 bottles stackable on two perpendicular sides - a position with the bottles laid down for the capture of the sparkle and a "sur pointe" position with the bottles placed vertically, neck down. The Gyro, a motorised apparatus fixed on a pivoting stand, similarly allows the movement of the bottles from horizontal to vertical and their rotation in all senses and through all angles. It applies a new work method, computer controlled, where the rotation and the raising of the bottles at regular intervals with identical impulses allows it to function without interruption.

      It allows the wines to be riddled in very short cycles (one or two weeks). Indeed, one million bottles can be riddled in one year in a small workshop of roughly 100m2. Manual riddling allows seven to eight cycles per year, whereas riddling with a Gyro currently gives forty to forty-five. It deals with so many bottles so well that the riddling capacity has been multiplied by seventy in certain wine cellars.

      Research is currently aiming to totally eliminate riddling, which would render the riddling racks and other Gyros obsolete. The current study consists of enclosing the yeast in the micro spheres of an alginate gel, in order that they can react without spreading throughout the wine. With the fermentation finished and the bottle placed vertically neck down, the micro spheres will be forced by gravity towards the bottleneck where they can be easily expelled during the disgorgement process. This project is still at the research stage, however, while its impact on the quality of the wine of Champagne is being evaluated.

      The bottles - riddled, clarified, and stacked neck down - are then taken to the disgorgement workshop and kept neck down with their sediment in the pallet-cases. This neck down conservation can be extended for years and allows the wine to blossom until maturity.