Somewhere in the Champagne region of France Manolito Martt walks down 119 stairs into a dimly-lit cellar.He unlocks a gate in a corner and then begins to painstakingly quarter turn bottle after bottle of maturing champagne.When he is finished he walks back up the 119 stairs. He does this every day for up to 60 days. This is an ancient champagne-making process called reumage or riddling. The idea is to get the sediment to the top of the bottle so it can be removed.The quiet, damp dark cellar seems a world away from rioting hockey fans in Vancouver, Canada but when the Boston Bruins celebrated their Stanley Cup win over the Vancouver Canucks in June, they did so with a 100lb bottle of champagne riddled by Manolito. It was worth as much as $175,000.Armand de Brignac is made by the Cattier family of Chigny-Les-Roses and is one of the top-rated champagnes in the world.American brothers Brian and Brett Berish of distribution company, Sovereign Brands began selling the brand in 2007. Brian Berish was recently in Bermuda to see Armand de Brignac launched by Premier Distributors.While here, he met with The Royal Gazette.“Eleven years ago when we started our company, one of our long-time strategic objectives was a high-end champagne brand,” said Mr Berish. “Way back in 1999 we visited about 75 percent of all the chateau-producing champagne houses. We were introduced to champagne maker Jean-Jacques Cattier and his family and they shared Armand de Brignac with us.”The Cattiers have been producing champagnes and wines since the 1760s, and making versions of Armand de Brignac for some time for private consumption. Jean-Jacques Cattier's mother came up with ‘de Brignac' in the 1950s, after one of her favourite characters in a novel. Mr Cattier's sister later added ‘Armand' for balance. Mr Cattier, in his youth, pursued passions for Antarctic exploration and physics, but was happy to come back to the family business. He was overjoyed that his son, Alexandre, wanted to continue the family tradition, and he is now hoping that his young grandson, Armand, will also one day be interested.“There is a lot of history,” said Mr Berish. “They have their own land which is about 30 hectares, or 70 or so acres. It is the only champagne that is made completely by hand. There is no automation, no bottling line. There are only eight people that touch the brand. The father Jean Jacques, son Alexandre and six other people are part of the process. When they shared Armand de Brignac with us the liquid was truly remarkable. Back in 1999 we met them, and the brand was officially introduced for commercial sale in 2007.”The Berish boys grew up in the liquor industry. Their father, Barry Berish, spent 40 years with the Jim Beam brand company, running things for about 25 years. Brian Berish spent years at Jim Beam and Brett Berish worked in mergers and acquisitions. They decided to start their own company just before the economy tanked in the United States. Some might think that a business selling high-end champagne during a recession might be a bad investment, but actually the champagne has gone from strength to strength. The first year they produced 2,500 six-packs of champagne and last year they made 8,000 six-packs. Fine Champagne magazine recently did a rigorous blind tasting of 1000 champagne brands and rated Armand de Brignac number one in the world. In Bermuda, Armand de Brignac is sold for $400 to $600 depending on whether it's brut gold, blanc de blanc or rose.“We have a very broad customer base,” said Mr Berish. “We have the very wealthy as customers, but we also have people we call aspirational, who may be in a nightclub and want to impress someone or maybe they are out celebrating.”He said in the last two weeks two night clubs alone, that he knows of, sold $400,000 worth of Armand de Brignac.These days most champagne goes through some automated process. Just listening to how Armand de Brignac is made is enough to make the ‘I Want It Now' generation pull their hair out in frustration. Through the power of automation and assembly lines, champagne can be aged in about 18 months, but the Cattiers take five years with Armand de Brignac, and use much the same process as was used when champagne was first created in the 17th century.“Father and son hand-select the grapes so it is their decision before anything can proceed further,” said Mr Berish. “Once the grapes are selected, they are pressed using a traditional hand-press. Bertrand and Fabio are the two people who work the press. They only do the first squeeze of the juice and they don't press all the way down because they feel that the first squeeze is the ideal for Armand de Brignac. After pressing then the bottles have to be filled. One person puts a metal tube in the bottle, and fills it. They have to look inside the bottle to see if it is high enough. There is no machine that automatically shuts off at the right amount.”After the bottles are filled they are taken down to the cellar by Fabio. The cellar is considered the deepest in all of the Champagne region and was used as a bunker during previous wars. The cellar is thought to have the most ideal ageing conditions of any champagne brand, and the temperature ranges anywhere from 40F (4C) to 45F (7C). Then it is left for four to five years. Whether it is four or five years is up to the senior Cattiers. Riddling is one of the final processes, and even here, the Cattiers have chosen the long way around. Once sediment is removed from the top of the champagne bottle, known as degorgement, some liquid naturally escapes. The liquid is usually replaced by a concoction known as a dosage, that contributes to the champagne's flavour. The Cattiers age their dosage for about nine months.“Nobody does this,” said Mr Berish with a laugh. “The Cattiers believe that if they were to automate any stage of the process they feel it would shock the liquid and alter what they have been creating from generation to generation. If they were to automate the riddling process, for example, it would take 72 hours. Under automation, they use a machine to shake the bottle and they are done. The same thing with the degorgement. They put it in a machine, freeze the neck and pop the sediment out. But there just isn't that with the Cattiers, they just feel it would alter what they have created.”Useful website: www.armanddebrignac.com.