Grape Escape
Photo by Erin Matters
The Lakeridge Winery & Vineyards, located in
Clermont, the heart of Central Florida, is one of 11
wineries in the state.
Faintly visible in the distance, hundreds of rows of muscadine grapevines grow across 127 acres of hills blanketed with a morning mist. At the foot of the vineyard is a quaint building. The outside appears tranquil, but inside the building thousands of tiny grapes are becoming fine wines.
The Lakeridge Winery & Vineyards, located in Clermont, the heart of Central Florida, is one of 11 wineries in the state. Few wineries go through the painstaking process to make sparkling wines, but Lakeridge is famous for their handmade pink and white varieties.
Sarah Schaeffer, a wine guide at Lakeridge, explains champagne and Lakeridge's sparkling wines are the same thing.
“They are both made in the same age-old, artful way,” she says. “The only reason ours isn’t called champagne is because it would have to be made in the Champagne region of France.”
The process begins in the lush vineyards where the grapes are canopy pruned. The pruned grapes are crushed into a green mush held in a large, metal tank. The mush is then fermented and bottled.
Within the 22,400 square-foot building are the Tierage caves. Schaeffer calls these cool, damp caves the most important part of the winemaking process. Without them, the sparkling wine would simply be wine. The caves are stacked with wooden racks holding up to 17,000 bottles at a time in 4-foot wooden boxes with open fronts.
Turning the bottles requires a winemaker's crafty workmanship and a steady hand. Once sugar is added to the wine and the natural corks are closed, the winemakers go to work. They turn and tilt the bottles slightly using an indent in the bottom of each bottle. Whenever the bottle is turned, a hand-painted mark indicates the exact amount and direction of the turn. This process keeps the sugar sediment from settling.
After three to five months, the bottles are ready to be packaged. Sparkling wine is corked and covered with a colored foil. This signifies the wine was made in the same method as the French variety.
Not everyone can make a fine sparkling wine, Schaeffer says. Lakeridge Winery makes their version of sparkling wine, the Crescendo, completely by hand with care and precision. This personal, time-invested process makes the Crescendo harder to find and more expensive, but it makes it all the more special.