'I am drinking stars'..

..Don Perignon is quoted as saying in the 1690s.
In 1800 however Madame Clicquot was not impressed by the cloudy appearance of champagnes and discovered by shaking the bottles resting head down at 45 degrees (sur pointes), the loosened sediment accumulated in the neck of the bottle.
This sediment plug could then be removed and voila, crystal clear 'stars'.
The process known as remuage' or riddling.

It will be a while before the stars are released from these MyattsField bottles of bubbles but at the moment they are being 'manually riddled'.
Lying in 'pupitres', 'A' frame racks, the bottles are rotated 1/8 to 1/4 of a turn up to 25 times a process that may take up to six weeks.

An automatic riddler was invented in Spain in the 1970s but it is nice to see the handcrafting that creates these stars continues through the whole process.
POP!