HAUTE COUTURE WORKSHOP

Science always at the service of what nature produces

Grape harvest

Every year, the crucial moment of the D-Day is decided after a couple of grape- picking sessions and many tastings of the grapes, whose ripeness, even if homogeneous, is never really identical from one vine’s bunch to the next….Simply said, if the seed crunches under the tooth like a wafer, then it’s time to summon our team of 25 skilled grape-pickers who, in a friendly atmosphere, will spend the whole morning filling 15-kilo crates! 

Of course, each picker is asked to sort by sight. The young vines and Merlot are harvested at the end of September, the Cabernet Franc from “Bois de l’Or” at the beginning of October, and those from Saint-Christophe-des-Bardes last around October 6/8th.

The 2 tractors shuttle back and forth between the vines and the winery, and each crate content, previously sorted by our pickers, is then emptied directly into the de-stemmer, before being a second time conscientiously sorted.

A ripe harvest in the cool morning is the guaranty of a nice fruit full of aromas

High-precision sorting

The grapes are again sorted after de-stemming, then a 3rd and final sorting takes place after separating the stalks, where the caviar-like grape balls are pushed towards their promised destiny … our thermo-regulated stainless steel truncated-cone tanks, not without first being sprinkled with an indigenous yeast juice.

The sorting of ripe grape must be meticulous, as it is the last important detail before transmutation.

Indigenous yeast

A few days before each harvest, we make an improved “pied de cuve“. We take a half-bucket of around 50 kilos of the ripest grapes and sprinkle it with our in-house yeast cocktail, reproduced in the laboratory by the Bio-cean institute in Couëron (Loire-Atlantique). This dual process guarantees an optimized yeast flora that will colonize each vat of good, efficient, high-performance yeasts !

After all, as soon as the grapes are picked, they offer their sugars to undesirable yeasts as well as to bacteria of all kinds, each could conducive to aromatic deviations…that is the reason why a quick and efficient start of the fermentation with “our selected“ yeast is the key of our wine process.

Yeasting with our own indigenous yeasts guarantees on one hand the Estate's signature, and on the other hand a complete, rapid, high-quality alcoholic fermentation .

Fermentation control

No external inputs other than a small amount of sulfite to protect the grapes are part of our manufacturing secrets. Once the yeast has been added, the vats begin to ferment, releasing carbon dioxide.

This CO2 immediately protects the grape must from over-oxidation.

Temperatures are then reduced to calm the yeast activity, and we begin fractional pumping-over at a cold temperature (thanks to glycol water) of between 6° and 8° celsius , up to 6 times a day during the percolation phase.

This consists in pumping the grape juice from the bottom of the tank to the top, to allow it to pass through the cap that is gradually forming…

Gentle extraction

To explain how we extract the very essence of our grapes, which make our wine a Saint-Emilion renowned for its supple & “tamed“ tannins, we use the vocabulary of coffee and tea.

Numerous & fractional pumping-overs extract color and fruitiness from the liquid phase like a percolator extracts the epitome of an espresso coffee.

It’s in and under the grape skin that the “good tannins and anthocyanins” we’re looking for in our wine are. As the alcohol appears, which is a blind and brutal solvent, the percolator is transformed into a “filter coffee”, and at the end of alcoholic fermentation, the cap is lightly wetted to create an infusion. In this way, the wine juice gently macerates like an infusion of herbs or tea…the less noble tannins in the gangue surrounding the seed and in the seed itself are virtually not extracted.

After a maceration time that varies according to the vintage, the wine is racked and gently waits at a constant temperature of around 22° for the 2nd fermentation, known as malolactic fermentation, to finish its transmutation . This operation generally ends around mid-November.

Percolation and infusion ...the master process for a successful extraction.

Maturation, ageing and stabilization

Freshly produced, wine is still in its colloidal liquid form, where the long chains of polyphenols just need to melt and stabilize. This stabilization will take place under the effect of controlled redox, which we believe, only meticulously monitored barrel ageing can achieve.

Our master coopers Didier Fésil, Gaëtan Laborde and Cyril Morosi, who have followed our estate from the outset and are all responsible for its high-quality maturation, use noble, fine-grained woods with varying degrees of toasting according to the grape varieties and the vintage .

Our Cabernets Francs are matured in new oak barrels, while our silky, delicate Merlots are matured in one- or two-wine old casks. After a full year of aging, with on average one complete racking before summer, our wines are blended by barrel quality after tasting in December of the following year, and then placed in vats for a further 6 months, during which the rackings are followed by fining with egg whites to produce a stabilized, impurity-free wine that needs only light filtration before a careful bottling, generally carried out at the end of June by Franck Rey Bottling and his team.

Nitrogen bottling with dissolved oxygen control is carried out in a heavy bottle guaranteeing UV protection, with a premium-quality full natural cork supplied by Bourassé for a perfect sealing, enabling long, serene aging in an appropriate cellar.

In an Ameline barrel of extra fine oak from the Tronçay forest, our Cabernet Franc and Merlot blossom in the secret hope of one day becoming a great wine.