1- Base wine
2- Fermentation in bottle
3- Fermentation in rima
4- Clarification in pupitre
5- Disgorging and reserve wine
6- Market
d) Disgorging and "licor de expedición" (reserve wine)
Then, keeping the bottle vertical, it is dipped into a freezing brine (salt water) bath at -25º C, thereby trapping the sediment in a small frozen block.
This block containing the sediments is expelled through a procedure called disgorgement. The bottle is uncapped, and a small explosion forces out the frozen plug, while avoiding the release of carbonization. The disgorgement may be done by hand or by specialised machines.
The last step is topping off the bottle with licor de expedición, which, in general, is a very stable and totally neutral non-sparkling reserve wine to which sucrose and musts are added to give the Cava its personality. Among these additives are the sugars essential in determining which type of Cava the final product will be. Accordingly, based on the sugar content in grams, Cavas are classified as:
Brut nature: From 0 to 3 grams of residual sugar (no addition of reserve wine)
Extra brut: Sparkling wine with less than 6 grams per litre of sugar content.
Brut: From 0 to 15 grams sugar content per litre.
Extra Seco: From 12 to 20 grams sugar content per litre.
Seco: From 17 to 35 grams sugar content per litre.
Finally, the Cava may undergo ageing to become a Gran Reserva Cava, aged for a defined period of five or six years, maximum. In the ageing process, the cava loses some of its intensity, but gains in complexity due to its prolonged contact with the yeasts.
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