From Matthiasson: 

Matthiasson’s first sparkling wine has been more than five years in the making. Based off our experience farming and making still wine from the Linda Vista vineyard since 2011, we knew this site had the potential to make a great sparkling wine. We’ve always made early picks at low brix here, looking for freshness and acidity. Even when it’s harvested very early in the season, Linda Vista fruit is highly expressive with loads of flavor and character. Our goal was to translate the site’s tension and vibrancy into a sparkling wine that hums with the Matthiasson’s signature freshness balanced with depth of flavor. The project started with the 2020 harvest. We made an early pick from the Linda Vista vineyard, channeling typical sparkling wine’s low sugar and high acidity levels. Then we took just the coeur de
cuvée, or best juices from the first gentle press, to maximize freshness and minimize any bitterness, and we fermented the juice with native yeast in neutral barrels. When we tasted the finished base wine in the spring, the wine had great flavor and complexity... but not quite the level of acidity and precision we were looking for in our first traditional method sparkling wine. So, in 2021, we made multiple early picks from Linda Vista to ensure we had the vibrancy we were looking for. We combined that 2021 base wine with the 2020 reserve. The 2021 wine provided the necessary acidity and fresh citrus flavors, and thereserve wine added richness and depth.
By the spring of 2022, we had the flavors and balance we were looking for, and we moved to bottle and add our liqueur de tirage. We let the wine age sur lie in bottle for over three years to develop the complexity and mouthfeel gained from both that extended contact with the lees and the autolysis (breakdown of spent yeast after secondary fermentation). Finally, after numerous rounds of dosage trials we finally found the combination that added the right finishing balance to our sparkling wine.
In addition to the just-right amount of sugar, we found that the type of wine used in the dosage can have a significant impact on the flavor and texture of the final wine. In 2021, we worked with St. George distillery to make a small amount of brandy from some of our Linda Vista Chardonnay. Adding a small amount of Cognac to the dosage wine is actually a historical practice in Champagne, used to fine-tune the wine’s palate and final alcohol level. As we discovered, adding a touch of our brandy along with some non-sparkling 2022 Linda Vista Chardonnay, plus 4.5 g/L of sugar provided the perfect dosage to bring the finished wine’s acidity, mouthfeel, and flavors all into harmony.