Last night I went Sekt tasting with a group of friends. It included a tour of the Sekt cellar, 5 tastings, and a 3-course dinner. I learned a lot about how Sekt is made. This particular Sekt maker, Heim, makes "Farmer's Sekt", which means that the wineries of the region send their wine to Heim and Heim turns it into Sekt and then gives it back to the wineries (for a small fee of course). When a particularly good Sekt is made, Heim buys some of it from the winery and sells it as their own as well.
So, no big oak barrels here or big containers filled with fermenting wine. Instead there were hundreds of thousands of glass bottles filled with fermenting wine. Grape juice is first fermented with yeast in the bottles to form wine, then the yeast is filtered out and more yeast is added along with some sugar which will create carbon dioxide in the bottle and turn the wine into Sekt (sparkling wine). The whole process can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years depending on what type of Sekt they're making.
These machines shake the upside-down bottles of Sekt very gently for a week. This allows the yeast in the wine to settle in the top of the bottle which is then frozen and broken off, leaving the yeast-free sparkling wine behind.
Our guide, explaining to us how corks were invented and who really invented Sekt and Champagne.
A nice place for a wedding or formal gathering here in the cellar ... there is also an enormous kitchen here where you can take a cooking class.
Starting the tasting with a slightly sweet yet refreshing Secco. Secco is sparkling wine made from prosecco grapes. In Italy, it's called Prosecco but if it's made in Germany it's called Secco because it can only be called Prosecco if it comes from Italy.
Our full group of 15 ladies:
Some of us got to try to open a bottle of Sekt. Some were more successful than others. Deanna actually did an excellent job:
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