The grape harvest is a turning point for Champagne. After a full year's maintenance, the grapes are cut and harvested. harvested. This moment marks the dawn of the long and demanding process of creating Champagne.

Specifically for the Champagne region, picking is strictly by hand. The use of machines to pick grapes is strictly prohibited. prohibited. Over a two-week period, the 120,000 grape-pickers a year get organized to process the 34,300 hectares of the appellation.

A rigorous process is used to determine harvest start date. Regular samples are taken from the beginning of August early August to determine the sugar content of the grapes. In this way, we can determine, with precision, when the grapes will reach full ripeness and harvest date.

With global warming, grape harvests are harvests are getting earlier and earlier. In 1950, the beginning of this period early October. In 2020, a particularly early year, they began began on August 21, a month and a half earlier.