The house
XIXè
By the 19th century, the Deville family has been known to own vines for at least five generations. However at the time, the elders sell their grapes to big champagne producers rather than making their own bubbly nectar. The art of cultivating vines is then written in the DNA of the grand-parents, parents, children and grandchildren, but the desire of making champagne has yet to come.
1966
In 1966, Jean-Paul Deville is 23 years-old and works in the family vineyard, just like his father and grand-father before him. But he wants to go further and decides to create his own champagne brand, vinifyed in his own cellar.
1968
In 1968 wishing to control the entire process of winemaking, Jean-Paul decides to build his own press center and starts pressing his grapes himself. From then on, he oversees every single step of the production of his own champagne from A to Z.
1968
In 1968, the first bottle commercialised under the Champagne Jean-Paul Deville brand is out for sale! This is the beginning of a great adventure …
1986
In 1986, Champagne Jean-Paul Deville is one of the first « small producers » to start producing a rosé champagne, and it does so the traditional way: by blending.
1996
Ten years after his rosé, a never resting Jean-Paul Deville decides to create a cuvée Blanc de Blancs… An audacious bet since the Deville House is located in one of the Grand Cru of the Montagne de Reims, famous for its pinots noirs rather than for its chardonnays! But in Verzy the latter display some unique pinot-like aromas. Add to this a longer than average aging process, the result is a very distinctive Blanc de Blancs, which has never parted with success since its genesis.
2015
Upon her coming back to Champagne in 2011, Jean-Paul’s daughter, Marie-Alice, decided to go back to university to learn more about winemaking and bring new technical skills to the family business. She passed the National Oenologist Diploma and graduated from Reims University in 2015. Since, Jean-Paul and Marie-Alice team up on the Deville champagne production process.
2017
In 2017, after having surveyed our clients on the topic of the glass colour, we decided to bottle our cuvée Opalis - Blanc de Blancs in BLACK bottles... Until then Opalis was in see-through bottles which offered to our champagne no protection at all against UV-light. From 2021, you will be able to discover Opalis in its new, elegant ebony bottle.
2018
50 years after the first Champagne Deville bottle was commercialised, Marie-Alice reveals Quinte Essences, an ephemeral cuvée she created especially to celebrate the work of her father Jean-Paul. Quinte Essences is a very special cuvée indeed. It brings back to life two forgotten grape varieties: Arbanne and Petit Meslier, which associated with Pinot noir, Meunier and Chardonnay, grant distinctive aromas to Quinte Essences. Moreover, it is available at two different dosages: Brut Nature for the purity and Extra-Brut for the silkiness. But be aware, there are only 5000 bottles!
We are vine-growers : we live with our vines, caring for them through a series of manual works dictated by the seasons.
Winters offer a well-deserved rest to the vine after the demanding summertime. Nonetheless, if you wander among the vines one winter, you will see us patiently shaping our vine stocks through pruning and fastening in order to find the right balance between vivacity and fertility and ensure the quality of the next harvest.
In spring, the vine wakes up from its hibernation and puts all its efforts into producing and ripening our precious grapes during summer. At this time, we double our attention through the “green works”:
Disbudding:
In order to avoid useless tiring of the vines, we eliminate the « sucker » buds which do not produce fruits.
Tying-up:
This is the second shaping step during which we tie all the canes up tidily to better organise each vine stock.
Trellissing:
In order to limit the risk of disease, increase aeration and optimise sunshine on our vine stocks, we spread the canes out.
Trimming:
This is a step we repeat many times during spring in order to limit the vivacity of the vine and favour the quality over the quantity of the harvest.
Finally, autumn arrives and with it harvest time. In Champagne, harvest is an exclusively manual process to better respect the integrity of our grapes and thus the quality of their juice.
The glass wall of champagne bottles is thicker and stronger than for any other wine bottles, in order to ensure it resists the high pressure present inside the bottle (6 bars at 10°C). The bottom of the bottle is also deeply curved in for the same reason. In addition, this shape allows for "service à la champenoise" by which a person places one's thumb in the depression at the bottom of the bottle (called the punt) to hold it and serve.
Champagne is the wine that enjoys the most numerous different sizes of bottles. Ordinarily seen in bottles (75 cl), half-bottles (37.5 cl) or magnums (1.5 l), champagne can be bought in 15 different volumes from 20 cl to 30 l, the most famous being:
Jeroboam:
3 l or 4 bottles, the most popular of the big bottles
Mathusalem:
6 l or 8 bottles
Salmanazar:
9 l or 12 bottles
Balthazar:
12 l or 16 bottles
Nabuchodonosor:
15 l or 20 bottles, can serve up to 140 glasses.
The bigger the bottle, the better the champagne owing to a gradual and more complete aging process. Thus a half-bottle is better drunk rapidly whereas a jeroboam will happily be kept for years before opening.
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